Tag Archives: Week 6

Week 4/6 – Dance

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For these sessions, we continued the warm up games from the last session. To enhance the student lead activities, we then prepared and played each groups warm up games. For example, my groups game was jungle based.

dance-sheetdance-sheet-1

The students started off walking as if they were walking through the jungle, then I would shout out an animal. For example, if I shouted out “monkey”, they’d have to jump about and act like a monkey. This involved the whole section having to listen to instructions, be aware of the available space so that they didn’t bump into anyone and it also included everyone. Games like these are a great way for children to focus their attention on the teacher and follow instructions, whilst also having fun.

We then continued to work on our performances with the addition of the Halloween moves. Each group had been given the same steps at the start of the dance workshops, but had all managed to successfully create different, unique dances. We then evaluated our dances as a group.

evaluation

Once we all came together, we then practiced the whole routine from start to finish. This consisted of a starting pose which we all did in a Mexican wave style, then a spin. We then spaced out and did our section part of the dance. Next, individual groups took it in turns to perform their piece which they had been practicing in the previous weeks. Our section was last to perform. once all sections had performed their piece, we all gathered into the centre and fell to the ground to end the dance in time with the music.

The video can be found here under the dance section: http://moodle.uws.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=7698

Week 6 – Music

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I thoroughly enjoyed this session of music. To start with, we were given a pair of drumsticks/ beaters and asked to follow a rhythm. The teacher explained that we were going to be following an unorthodox music notation, and then said that instead of notes such as quavers, minim’s and crotchets, we were going to be using squares, circles and triangles. This meant that the children that were unfamiliar with musical notation were not confused, and everyone was on the same level. It also ensured that the pattern was easily followed with the rhythm. This was a good idea to teach children, as it teaches them concepts of rhythm and notation without confusing them too much. It can also help the teacher get a grasp of the rhythm without having to learn notation if they are not as confident in music as they would like to be.

Afterwards, we them looked at improvisation on instruments. We were split into pairs and told to choose an instrument (either glockenspiel or xylophone), and instructed to take out the F and B keys, to make the instruments sound better. This showed us the pentatonic scale, as well as improving the sound of our improvisation. We were then given an accompaniment by the teacher, who played “Hit The Road Jack”.

We took it in turns to play 3 bars of improvisation. I really enjoyed this input, as it was very hands on and I hadn’t played this instrument since 5th year at Secondary school.