This week’s dance workshop involved bringing together all of our prior learning in dance to rehearse and perform our final dance. This had been a fun, engaging journey from the beginning of dance to now, and I was certainly more confident this time than I had been at the start when it came to dance.

For me, this was the most fun input we had had in dance, and I think it came through in the final performance. This reiterated to me the need for dance to be fun and engaging for children as Cone (2009) had stressed, as it makes learning through dance much easier, and learners are more likely to be willing to engage if the learning is fun. The dance was based around the theme of Christmas, and incorporated the dance we had devised the week before as a class, as well as our smaller group dances. We had ample time to practice and pull the dance together before performing and filming, and the subsequent evaluation. As I have previously mentioned, I believe that allowing learners the opportunity to watch and evaluate their own performance can allow them to develop their judgement and creative skills (Eisner, 2002), considering their own performance and how than can improve. This allows dance to be more child-led and incorporate children’s own ideas to the extent that their own ideas influence their skills development.

An important consideration I have taken from dance has been the evaluation of my own skills development. I feel more confident as a future educator in my ability to teach dance in a way that is engaging and meaningful, while providing appropriate opportunities for creativity and originality (Gibb, 2o12) within the learning.

The music input was more informal and student-led, as there was no lecturer to facilitate the input. We had the opportunity to use the ukulele resources in the music studio, but as someone who has little experience with the instrument, I found it difficult to follow and teach myself some of the music from the resources. This in itself was a good learning experience, highlighting areas in my own knowledge which could use some development, and which I could look into in the future to improve my teaching in music.

References

Eisner, E. (2002) The Arts and The Creation Of Mind. New Haven [u.a.]: Yale Univ. Press

Gibb, C. (2012). Room 13: The Movement and International Network. International Journal of Art & Design Education, 31(3), pp.237-244.