Similar to every week of the Integrated Arts module I have been able to improve, develop and acquire new skills, this weeks focuses where dance and drama.
This week’s inputs started off with a lecture formed on dance in education, from the lecture I was able to gather why dance is important in education, implementation of dance and the role the class teacher. Within the Expressive Arts dance should always underpin creativity, creative dance is the idea of allowing the children to use their imagination to chorography and create a dance, in essences creative dance should not be teacher led in fact a child led activity (Cone, 2009). Creative dance should always be enjoyable, engaging and empowering for all children regardless of dancing ability (Pain et.al 2014). Paine, et.al ( 2014 p.1) elucidates dance as “means of human expressions” hence dance is a form of communication. “It (dance) requires no equipment apart from the body itself (the instrument) and a space in which to move (the medium)” (Paine et.al, p.1). The class teacher plays a fundamental role in children creative development through dance, first and foremost it is imperative that the teacher equally consider ideas and innovations of all children. Likewise, it is important that the teacher provides a safe, engaging and supportive learning environment, teachers should have knowledge in regards to the 10 basic dance skills, this will ensure that all children have a starting level and are able to build upon these 10-basic movement and is a beginning of their creative dance (Cone, 2009). Many would allude that dance is solely concerning physical development, however creative dance develops children social skills which is aspects of the creative skills definition and the creative process (Scottish Government, 2013). Creative dance enables children to make enlightened and analytic judgement, work in partnership with peers, develop thought processes, empowers confident individuals and improves children’s aesthetics awareness (Paine et.al , 2014 ).
During this the dance workshop we were focusing on developing our group routines from the previous week, however the class decided to use the theme of Christmas instead of Halloween, we used the foundation of the previous routines to develop new dance. Student took leadership of the warm-up, cool-down, starter game, 10 basic movements and visual stimulus relating all to the theme of Christmas, this enabled for us to understand what we have acquired over the weeks in regards to dance and our confidence and teaching ability in leading a creative dance lesson. The group I was working with were given visual stimulus we created five pictures as our stimulus of:
• An elf
• A present
• Christmas tree
• Fire place
• Santa
We then proceeded in supplying the picture stimuli to groups and the groups were tasked in developing a 4-count movement to express their stimuli. We continue to build onto our routines by starting off with a whole class dance and then separating into our groups to perform our initial dances. I thoroughly enjoyed this week’s dance inputs as we were all given the opportunity to create our own dance under the guidance of the lecture. Relating this week’s dance inputs with Tallis Habits Pedagogy Wheel I believe I was able to be imaginative due to understanding the 10 basic movements, using this understanding to create a routine and then evaluating what improvement were need.
The drama input was centre around micro-teaching, in which my group presenting our drama lesson. The group I was working with we decided to plan our lesson based on the Children’s story ‘The Three Little Pigs’. We thought it was appropriate to use a video as visual stimulus for our audience, we had serval video options to choose from and our final decision was to go with a video that contained subtitles this meant within a diverse class all children would be able to follow the story along and be included regardless of needs. Throughout the micro-teaching lesson, we used skills and teaching methods that we had acquired throughout the module in order to develop the story as well as the skills of the audience. It was great to see all the audience engaging with our lesson and drama conventions. Considering this experience to the Tallis Habit Pedagogy Wheel I would say I was within the ‘collaborative’ segment as I had to work and co-operate with my group to develop and produce the micro-teaching lesson, likewise I had to present the lesson peer audience and use peer feedback to reflect upon the lesson.
During this week’s inputs I have been able to enlarge my understanding in regards to performing both within drama and dance. Dance is based on communicating through movement where drama is communicating verbally, however linking both drama and dance messages and themes can be conveyed through non-verbal movements and expressions.
References
Tallis, T. (2013) Tallis Habits Pedagogy Wheel. [Online] Available: http://www.thomastallisschool.com/tallis-pedagogy-wheel-guide.html. [ Accessed on 30 November 2017]
Cone (2009). Following their Lead: Supporting Children’s Ideas for Creating Dance. [online] Available: http://moodle.uws.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/109357/mod_resource/content/1/Purcell%20Cone%20%282011%29.pdf. [Accessed: 30 November 2017]
Education Scotland. (2013) Creativity Across Learning 3-18. [Online] Available: https://education.gov.scot/improvement/Documents/cre39-impact-report.pdf. [Accessed 1 December 2017]
Paine, L and National Dance Teachers Association. (2014) Complete Guide to Primary Dance. 1st ed. Not Stated: Human Kinetics
