This week in our Integrated arts module, we had another dance workshop with Zara. In this workshop, we explored deeper content to the teachers role in dance within the curriculum and what we should be delivering to the students. My aims as a teacher in practice when demonstrating dance to the classroom are…
- Have basic knowledge of the 10 basic dance skills and how these can be performed.
- Believe in the students creative process : ‘The vision for the dance belongs to the children. The article illuminates a reflective stance on teaching and observing children creating their own dances based on their ideas’ ( Cone, 2009, p. 81).
- Valuing the creative process.
- To create a supportive and safe dance environment in the classroom for students.
- Assist students when faced with challenges such as a stimulous.
We then explored methods of how to achieve these outcomes in a classroom. These were some responses from our breakout room discussion.
- By providing students with visual stimulous, this gives them an opportunity to dip into the creative process. Stimulous could be pictures, objects or clothing and this provides children with a starting point.
- Regular performances of students work. This could be through them describing their creative process to the class, or through a dance performance which the students work towards. This gives students a sense of accomplishment and achievement through making something of their own through exploring their emotions and their inner selves (Cone, 2009, p.83).
After this, we studied the positive impacts of dance. One of these impacts was that dance increases confidence and physical wellbeing within students. I can personally relate to these impacts as I have really enjoyed the online zoom dance classes with Zara. At the beginning, I did not have the confidence to turn my computer camera on zoom, however this week I did and I felt a sense of achievement as I felt comfortable. I also feel physically well after these workshops as recently my mental health has not been the strongest due to the lockdown and stress. However, the dance workshops have really enlightened my mood and I look forward to them each week.
We then split into breakout rooms and had to create 3 Christmas warm up games. Our group chose the three following activities
- Christmas characters: this activity requires children to run around, and when the teacher shouts a Christmas character such as Rudolph, Santa, snowman, they need to position themselves (or with a partner) which symbolises these characters.
- Christmas Scenes: this activity is based on team work and really tests the students communication skills. Students would organise themselves into groups of 4-5. The teacher would then call out a Christmas scene, for example the birth of baby Jesus, and the students would be given 3 minutes to create a freeze frame related to the scene. Whatever team scores the highest wins.
Our final task of the workshop was to get into our performance groups to rehearse our dance sequence. However, we had to add a dance convention. Our group decided to add repetition to our routine.
For visual arts, I completed video analysis on my painting:
