Mrs. Condie's Class Visit 6: And It Was Still Hot

It was Mrs. Condie's class turn to experience one of my favorite lessons! This lesson is based of the book "Where the Wild Things Are" by Maurice Sendak. Since I've already explained this lesson I'll spare those details, but you can check this post here for a little more information.

It's fun as a teacher to see the differences between classes when you do the same lesson. There are also always similarities. Some are amusing, for example, without fail whenever it comes to the part where Max tumbles by on the ocean, at least two students will start doing the worm and they will undoubtedly be boys.

Another thing I love about book lessons is that more often than not by the end of the lesson the students have essentially learned and remembered a short little dance. All I have to do is read the book, and they are able to dance and remember what comes next. I also love allowing the students to watch each other dance at the end. Not only do they watch each other, but I then give them an opportunity to raise their hand and tell me an observation, or if they saw something that they liked or something someone did well. It's a nice way for the students to not only encourage each other, but also practice connecting what we've done in class to their world, as well as practicing expressing it verbally.

 Image: http://www.gems6-2.com/images/p_33.jpg

Mrs. Jenkins' Class Visit 5: Adjectives

With this lesson Mrs. Jenkins gave me a list of adjectives that the students were learning. I talked about the definitions with the students and tried to give them ways to remember the words. Once we were done talking about the definitions we spent time exploring how we could dance each of these adjectives. Some of the adjectives were easier to dance than others but I think that in the end we were able to figure out together how each adjective could be turned into movement. Overall I think by dancing out the adjectives the students were able to better remember the differences between each adjective.

Mrs. Condie's Class Visit 5: November

This dance lesson was all about the month November! For the first half of the lesson the students were paired in partnerships and we explored how we could create each letter using our bodies. The students particularly loved this activity and loved doing it with a partner. While creating each letter I challenged the students to make their letter different than everyone else, I didn't want to see anyone making the letter in the same way. I love giving this challenge because it helps prevent students simply copying each other, they instead have to really think and come up with their own way to do something.

After we were done spelling out November with our bodies we explored different aspects of the month through movement. We did everything ranging from falling leaves and cold frigid air, to blowing wind and crunchy crumbled leaves. After we had explored these as a group we played a quick dancing game. I divided the room into four sections and gave each section a criteria (for example one section would be the falling leaves and the adjacent section would be the blowing wind.) The students could dance from one area to the next, or they could to choose to be in the middle of two sections but they had to figure out how they could do both types of movements at the same time. I turned on some music and let the students have fun dancing from one section to the next.

Mrs. Jenkins' Class Visit 4: I'll Eat You Up, I Love You So!

One of my all time favorite creative dance lessons is based off of a favorite childhood book, "Where the Wild Things Are." by Maurice Sendak. I'd taught this lesson quite a few times while a member of BYU's outreach dance company Kinnect, so I was excited to share this with Mrs. Jenkins class. This book has such good imagery ranging from trees with swinging vines growing in Max's room and a tumbling ocean, to wild things with terribly sharp claws. It's such a perfect book for a dance lesson!

The lesson focuses on teaching students the difference between sharp and smooth. While reading the book, I ask the students to identify different things they see in the pictures that are smooth and sharp. When dancing I use these qualitative terms to guide their movements. I say things such as "can you grow smoothly?" or while they are showing me their terrible claws I ask them to use their whole bodies to show me their best sharp shape.

Using books to create dance lessons are my favorite because not only does it provide great imagery and vocabulary, but it also challenges the students creatively. How can they dance out the book without pantomiming the story? How can they use their entire body to express the story? It's a great way to challenge the student's to think abstractly and artistically.

http://www.muddyingthewaters.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/where-the-wild-things-are-2.jpeg

Mrs. Condie's Class Visit 4: A Complete Thought

For this lesson Mrs. Condie told me that some of her students were having a harder time understanding that a sentence creates a complete thought that ends in a period or other form of punctuation.  To begin the lesson we created a story as a class that I wrote on the board. (It was a week before Halloween, the story was appropriately about a hungry werewolf on a full moon.) While writing the story on the board I purposefully left out any form of punctuation or capitalization. These was so that we could add it in as a class afterwards. 

Once our story was created we started dancing out the story with a few stipulations. Ever time there was a period they had to freeze, and every time it was a new sentence their movement had to be as big as they could make it (to represent the capitalized letter.) Every time there was a comma they would have to take a audible breath while swinging their body from high to low. When the punctuation was a question mark they had to make a curved shape, and when it was an exclamation mark they had to jump. These requirements made it so that the students had to be aware of where the punctuation was within the story, and hopefully it helped them better understand the concept that a sentence is a complete thought. 

Mrs. Jenkins' Class Visit 3: The Five Sense

This lesson was on the five senses: sight, touch, taste, sound, and smell. At the beginning of the lesson we read a short book that identified and gave examples for each of the five senses. The rest of class was spent exploring these five sense and how they can influence our movement. If something feel smooth, how can you show that with your body? What about if it is sharp and pokey? How is that different? If something smells rotten would you want to jump around? Or would you slink around instead? There are so many different possibilities and it was a fun day to simply explore these different sense and how they can influence our movement quality.

Mrs. Condie's Class Visit 3: Chunking Words

Chunking words is a reading strategy students can use when they come across an unfamiliar word that they are having a difficult time sounding out. The students essentially take the word and divide it into chunks that they recognize. For example the word information can be chunked into in-for-ma-tion.

For the lesson we came up with movement for each individual chunk. Let's use "information" as an example. Let's say we decide to jump and hit a sharp shape in the air on "in", then we melt to the floor on "for", then we hit a twisted shape on "ma", and then we swing a body part on "tion". We would then read the word once in chunks while doing the movements, and then we would read the word normally and the movements would have to flow together. So the first time the word is read the movement would go something along the lines of jump...melt...twist...swing... When read a second time the movements would turn into jump/melt/twist/swing with no pauses.

We did one word as a class, and then I divided them into small groups of four or five students. Each group had their own word that they had to chunk and create movement for. Each group was then given the opportunity to perform what they created.