According to Cone, creative dance leaves the vision of the dance to the young people. Giving children the opportunity to create their own piece of dance and perform it to their peers will help to build their confidence and self-esteem.
“One of the most powerful experiences dance educators can offer children is the opportunity to create a dance that reflects their ideas.” (Cone, 2005)
The lesson should be fun and meaningful to the children. You can make it meaningful by relating it to something they are doing or learning about in class or relate it to the season. For example, at Christmas time they could make up a dance to do with Winter and integrate some Christmassy, wintery dance moves along to Christmas music. It is important that we as educators can integrate creative dance into children’s learning as it increases their confidence, physical and mental well-being and the ability to communicate and work in groups. Teachers have to be “dedicated to deliver quality physical education and dance programs and view dance as essential to a student’s education.” (Cone and Cone, 2005) Children get the opportunity and freedom to create their own dance which gives them sense of achievement when they are successful. My role as a future teacher would be to support and assist the children when required in a safe environment. If I see that they may be struggling I can guide them by providing them with structure and stimulus to encourage creativity, for example, giving them a picture and asking them to come up with a dance move based on that picture. I can also attend CPD’s to build my confidence teaching it by getting advice from people who know what to do.
“Children should be able to compose, perform and appreciate dance.” (Smith-Autard, 2002)
They will be able to achieve this if we make it meaningful to them and they are provided with the resources required to create a dance.
In the dance workshop we finalised our dance ready to film next week. Again, it was entirely choreographed by us as we would do with children to allow them the opportunity to create and perform their own dance, building their confidence and self-esteem. Children will be proud that they have created a full dance by themselves and be able to perform the finished product. They are also able to develop their imagination and express themselves through creative dance. (Cone and Cone, 2005) As teachers we could step in and give children some guidance if they are struggling to come up with ideas. To enhance our dance, we added a start and end position, a change of position and a choreographic device. The children will work together to create something meaningful just as we have in class and develop skills such as collaboration, listening and being creative. Each group also came up with their own warm-up game we could play with children. We came up with Mirror dance tag, Reindeer tag, Christmas tree tag and Magic Rocks, and we got the chance to try them out and show how we would teach it to children.
We continued learning to play the glockenspiel in the music workshop. We should teach children how to hold their beaters properly, so they get the best sound out of the instrument. I learned that children find it easier to get their head around music with four beats in a bar, so it would be best to start with that. When there are less than four beats it is harder on the glockenspiel as children want to carry the note on, the way you can on the piano. Children can come up with acronyms to help remember the names and order of the notes. We practiced pieces of music taking each line at a time, asking the children how they are getting on throughout. We moved through it quite quickly but with children you would take it much slower: say, clap, play. The class was split in half and while one half played the normal melody, the other half added harmony. Again, building the layers of a cake and adding the top layer – pitch. Posters could put up around the class to show how music is structured using the cake as an example or a sandwich. In music, phrases will answer each other, so like an answer to a question, it should end on a lower note. Therefore, you will know when a piece of music has come to an end based on this. The Pentatonic Scale consists of five notes and is a good place to start with children as the notes sound nice and fit together. We tried some improvisation using the Pentatonic Scale (CDEGA). We can help make it easier for children by taking the notes off that we are not using, F and B, so that we do not accidentally play it. This again gives them the chance to be creative and the freedom to create their own music. It will sound good; therefore, they will feel like they have been successful, helping to build their confidence. (https://nafme.org/20-important-benefits-of-music-in-our-schools/)
References
Cone, T.P. and Cone, S.L. (2005) Teaching Children Dance Human Kinetics Publishers.
Smith-Autard, J. (2002) The Art of Dance in Education Methuen Drama.
National Association for Music Education (2014) [online] 20 Important Benefits of Music in our Schools Available: https://nafme.org/20-important-benefits-of-music-in-our-schools/ [Accessed on: 14th December 2019].
