I recently received my first input on dance and was focused around what the 10 essential skills are to facilitate a successful dance session. One activity I found useful was the Chinese whispers dance game. In this game two lines were formed with all facing one direction except the two standing at the front of the line. The two people facing the teacher would copy their short dance and show it to the person behind them who would do likewise until the end of the line was reached. This activity would test children’s dancing skills whilst also making them rely on their memory skills. Dance also empowers pupils and gives them opportunity to discover their own feelings, thoughts and ideas (Cone, 2009). The other activity required me to work in a group in assigning all the body parts to their correct place in a body outline we draw.

List of assignable body parts

We created the outline of the body and assigned all of them with relative ease. From recent past experiences in a primary school where the focus was the human body I had a strong knowledge base to draw from this task. As a result we were able to finish first and check our answers against an iPad with a detailed outline of the different body parts.

Completed body with all parts assigned

I found this activity interesting and thought it could be excellent in teaching cross curricularly with biology.

I also attended an art session and whilst I always enjoyed art throughout my life I have never been particularly gifted. However in this session it was revealed that art isn’t about your skill level at drawing or painting but is instead about allowing the child to express themselves in an enjoyable way. By doing this they can express through art what they cannot say in words(Eisner, 2002).

During this session we were instructed to coat a wooden board in black paint and use our fingers or other objects such as lego bricks to make marks on an A3 sheet of paper. Initially I started creating a smily face with the edge of my hand being smeared in paint but the teacher removed it when he realised I was trying to draw rather than simply mark make. This was justified as the focus of the session was about how children enjoyed the feeling of drawing from other senses in art such as the feel of the paper and smell of the paint. I then proceeded to simply mark make before being rotated round to another group where we were then instructed to draw shapes and objects using the marks made by the person on the paper. One line looked like the pole of a fishing rod and I drew around it as such to make it look more like one. It was impressive to see the diverse range of shapes that was available from simply using your hand as the mode of putting paint on paper. I enjoyed this session even though I had no impressive artwork to show for it and found that mark making can be a meaningful experience that allows children to express their emotions and ideas in a more effective way than perhaps any other medium.

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: Taylor & Francis. Accessed 2 January 2017].

Eisner, E. (2002) The Arts and the Creation of Mind, In Chapter 4, What the Arts Teach. London: Yale University Press. Available: Integrated Arts module on Moodle. [Accessed 5 January 2017].