Dancing was never something I have enjoyed doing more than just swinging a hairbrush around my room thinking I was the Spice Girl missing from the group and as I got older the idea of dancing turned into half-hearted swaying of the body with a drink in hand. Nothing really more, nothing really less – it’d be far too embarrassing. The in-between stages only consisting of the yearly winter social dancing sessions which consisted of running away from the boys who you didn’t want to hold hands with.
The games during the workshop today were really effective for getting kids more comfortable with each other. Playing games such as People-to-People and number games involving sitting back to back, being lifted up etc made me forget the awareness of the others’ bodies as I was only focusing on completing the task of elbow to elbow, knee to elbow etc. Games like these eradicate the discomfort of bodily contact by replacing it with fun. Teaching through dance is especially engaging as the children can take the lead after input, creating their own dances and choreography; furthermore, it can build confidence in the individual during group discussions for dances as in dance there won’t be the ability ‘hierarchy’ which can be prevalent in some classroom subjects. For parents as well, when putting on performances it gives the children who don’t usually come to the forefront to be seen and appreciated. Dance is also an effective platform for demonstrating and gauging the children’s understanding of topics if they’re given a topic and are asked to create a dance on said topic (Cone, 2011). As Eisner (2002) stated understanding might not be expressed solely through words – the elements of movement and creativity aid demonstrating the cognitive capacity of children especially if they do have limited linguistic skills (e.g. kids with autism, learning difficulties) and give a better indication of the individual’s knowledge.
From a teacher’s point of view there really isn’t much input from the teacher aside from directing and providing basic structures. From there the pupils can take it into whatever direction they want to, the teacher themselves can alter little parts to create fillers, make the routine as a whole more fluid, or arrange it
At first I was dreading the class dance as I thought it was just be awkward and embarrassing but as each stage was put together over the weeks it was pretty good seeing everyone loosening up a bit and cracking on. It just showed to me that teaching and utilising dance isn’t as difficult or daunting as it initially sounds. I really liked how easy it was developing on the 10 basic moves to getting the kids to put moves to numbers so then they can easily take the reigns in making up their own dance moves. As long as they are provided a bit of structure a whole terms worth of dance can be provided and can be put into a performance. Not only can classroom content be used as an influence for the dance theme, musicality is also introduced through keeping the beat and rhythm and it gets the children moving contributing to healthy living. Overall I really saw the significance in teaching dance and will be definitely be remembering these methods to teach to my future classes.
References
Cone, T.P. (2009) Following Their Lead: Supporting Children’s Ideas for Creating Dances, Journal of Dance Education, [Online] Vol.9(3), pp.81-89. Available: Moodle [Accessed: 04 October 2016].
Eisner, E (2002) The Arts and the Creation of Mind. Yale University Press.
