Mrs. Jenkin's Class Visit 16: Silly Valentine Letter

In the spirit of Valentine's Day, for this lesson I had the students fill in this silly Valentine letter

The student's absolutely loved it, and thought it was utterly hilarious! Once this silly letter was filled out we began dancing. This class has improved so much over the past few months, that it absolutely amazes me! They think about the different ways they can move, and they apply all the things they've learned such as levels, size, timing, and energy. They give suggestions on how they think we could move, or how we could make our movement more interesting. For example during one part of the poem  they wanted to make this awesome shape that used each other's positive and negative space. I never even taught them about positive and negative space! But here they are thinking and creating movement in new ways every time I see them. 

Mrs. Condie's Class Visit 16: Love, Splat

Visit 16 took place on Valentine's Day, so what a perfect day to have a Valentine inspired lesson. We read the book "Love, Splat" by Rob Scotton. At the end of the book was a cute poem that Splat's crush had written him.

Inspired by this poem, I had the class come up with their very own Valentine's Day Poem, and here is what they created.

The Strong Hearted Lion

The strong hearted lion loved Valentine's Day, 

He liked to eat candy in every way. 

Upside down and right side up. 

Even eating like a pup!

Giving hearts to everyone, 

Valentine's Day is so much fun! 

Quite an impressive little poem! After we came up with the poem we spent the rest of class turning it into movement. Even though this poem had a couple of great movement potential words such as upside down and right side up, most of the poem required quite a bit of abstraction and creative thinking, but these 2nd graders continually impress me with what they come up with. My only wish at the end of the day was that we had more time to dance, it took us quite some time to come up with the poem. However, with the time we did have the student's did a great job in translating poetry into motion!

Visit 13-15: National Anthem Performance

The next three visits consisted of preparing for both Mrs. Condie's and Mrs. Jenkins' class to perform in a school assembly. They were going to dance the fourth verse of the National Anthem while the faculty sung. Once again this was an opportunity for the students to create and perform their own movement. The only part I created was their beginning and ending shape. (Which in all reality I just gave them specific criteria and they created their own ending shape) There were six groups and each group was given one line of the fourth verse to create their dance. It's so fun to see the difference in what they were creating during my first couple of visits, to what they were creating now for this performance.

I was so proud of what they came up with. Especially since there were some hard words in some of their lines. It was awesome to see that as they were doing their dance they created they were also singing the words. By creating a dance, they had inadvertently learned the fourth verse of the Star-Spangled Banner! I honestly didn't know the fourth verse until I was preparing for their lesson. Hopefully they will remember this verse for the rest of their lives, I know that I still remember songs I learned in elementary school.

O thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation.
Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the Heav'n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave

Santa's Stuck!!! Visits 8-12

The next four visits we combined both Mrs. Condie's and Mrs. Jenkins' Class to work on a Christmas performance. The students worked and practiced really hard to perform in front of all the 1st and 2nd grade classes. There dance was based off the book "Santa's Stuck" by Rhonda Gowler Greene. It's a story in which Santa eats way too many Christmas goodies and get's stuck on the way back up the chimney. It takes his reindeer, a mama cat and her six kittens, a dog, and one mouse with a tiny tractor to push Santa out of the chimney

The beginning of the dance was done all together and consisted of almost the entire first half of the book. However, for the last half of the book, the students were split into five groups. Each group was  given their very own page, and they had to create a dance that their group could do for that page. Mrs. Condie, Mrs. Jenkins and I went around and helped the students, but ultimately the students came up with it on their own. The very last part of the book was done all together.

 Once the students were done creating we began practicing doing the entire thing. The only difficult part was helping the students coordinate when their group entered and exited the space. However after a few tries they were able to master it. The performance was done on the schools stage in there gym. The students were so excited, and I had several come up to me to tell me how nervous they were. One even asked if they would get to wear a costume. After they were done performing I had a mom come up to me to tell her son had been talking about it non-stop for the last week.

This was definitely one of my favorite moments during my Arts Bridge experience. The students did such a good job creating their own movement and practicing the dance

Image: http://images.betterworldbooks.com/052/Santa-s-Stuck-9780525472926.jpg

Mrs. Condie's Class and Mrs. Jenkins' Class Visit 8: The First Thanksgiving

For my eighth visit I did the same lesson for both Mrs Condie's and Mrs. Jenkins' class, so I figured one blog post would suffice. This lesson was on November 22nd and since it was about a week before Thanksgiving the lesson was on the first Thanksgiving. I read to them a cute book called "Pete the Cat: The First Thanksgiving" by Kimberly and James Dean. The book essentially tells the story of the first Thanksgiving starting from when the Pilgrims set sail on the Mayflower until they share the first harvest with Squanto and the other Native Americans.

Since it was the eighth visit the students by now are pretty familiar with different dance terms. As they progress it's great to challenge them to find new ways to do things. Can they do the same thing on a different level? What about faster or slower? Bigger or smaller? Can you do it while twisting? What's great about the eighth visit is that they are starting to do these things on their own without me having to remind them. While they are dancing I can see different students making these different creative choices and that's always really rewarding.


Image: Page 11 of "Pete the Cat: The First Thanksgiving" by Kimberly and James Dean

Mrs. Jenkins Class Visit 7: Twas the Night Before Christmas

I did this lesson on November 15th, but one can never get in the Christmas Spirit too early! Mrs. Jenkins thought that it would be fun to explore movement based on the classic "Twas the Night Before Christmas". For a while we actually thought we would be doing a Christmas performance to this story but we ultimately decided on a different book (more on that to come!)

The students had a lot of fun reading this book and coming up with movement for the story. The story is longer so we only got to the part where he "tore open the window and threw up the sash". However, this allowed us to sufficiently explore the different possibilities for the parts of the story that we did get through. Mrs. Jenkins found a recorded reading of the story online and we played it as an accompaniment to the student's dancing.

On a different note... If you're wondering where the post for the 8th visit to Mrs. Condie's class is... so am I. I misplaced what I wrote down about that particular lesson, and the only note I can find says "Visit 7: Turkey". Since I have no recollection of what that means I can't really blog about it. But I'm sure it was a great lesson!

Mrs. Jenkins Class Visit 6: Starry Safari

Mrs. Jenkins class was learning about personal narratives and so for my dance lesson this visit I found a fun story that was told in the form of a personal narrative. The story we read was "Starry Safari" by Linda Ashman. It's a book about a little boy and his adventures while on a African safari, he sees herds of wild wildebeest and wallows in the mud with some hippos. This was a fun story and I really think the students enjoyed reading it and dancing it out. My only challenge with this lesson was in helping the students to move past pantomiming into more original movement. The differences comes in challenging the students to be like something rather than being something. There is a differences in moving tall and long like a giraffe rather than crawling around on all fours being a giraffe.  Overall the students did a great job in abstracting the movement and thinking creatively.