Dancing is definitely not one of my strong points – sure I’ll dance around to music I like, but dancing on a professional level, I cannot do. I used to be told that the noises I made thumping around while dancing could be compared to those of an elephant running in a herd. Anyway, when I saw that I would have to take part in a dance workshop, I was a bit overcome with anxiety, because it’s fine to stand in a room of people and do something I’m good at, but everyone watching me dance? Not something I would usually let happen. I had my little panic, and then I told myself that I couldn’t be the only person feeling like this, that everyone else on my course had to dance too, and I reassured myself that it could be fun if I just relaxed and let myself enjoy it.

On the Friday when I walked into the drama classroom, I felt pretty good. I left my bag and jacket at the side of the room and sat on the floor with everyone else in front of the smart board. The lecturer introduced herself and went through a few things on the powerpoint with us, showing us a few dance videos that could be shown to a class to make them think about different styles of dance and music. Then we all stood in a circle and copied the lecturer’s moves, and long story short everyone got into groups and performed a really short and sweet dance routine for the class. It’s a good idea to just throw yourself into the activity and just have a laugh, it doesn’t have to be scary if you don’t let it. At the end of the day, nobody was forced to do anything, and we all ended up with smiles on our faces because it was a really enjoyable experience.

One thing that I took away from this tutorial was that by getting people to personalise the lesson you have planned in their own way, it makes it more enjoyable and you could end up learning a thing or two from it. By getting to choose our own dance moves and poses, we all added our own creativity into our lesson and it gave us a chance to have a laugh and get our imaginations flowing. This is something that I would love to incorporate into one of my lessons when I attend my placement, because there is nothing more exciting than having fun while learning, and adding your own twist to a pre – planned lesson.

Secondly, the dance tutorial was accessible for everyone. There were no limitations on what you could do, and because of the personal touches, anyone would be able to make the lesson fit to what they are capable of doing. Whether you want to spin around on the floor or just stand and click your fingers, you’ve brought something to the lesson and it helped with your own enjoyment. Disability? No problem, you can still take part! I think this is really important in making sure everyone can be a part of the class, and ensuring that all pupils are learning and exercising their imaginations.

Lastly, I think that letting everyone show off what they came up with at the end of the class was a nice way of sharing ideas and a lot of the time if you’re proud of something, you want to show it off. This would let pupils grow their confidence while talking about or performing something they spent time and effort on, and it gives them time to be appreciated and others can get to know them a bit more.

I often come out of lessons with more than I expected to learn, and I hope that when I’m teaching in the future, my class will feel the same way.