Week 3: Dance Battles

Week 3 combined lessons of dance with those of science and math. Firstly, the teacher candidate led lesson incorporated the aspects of habitats and dance. For example, the opening activity had us dancing as certain climates/areas were shouted out. (tundra, mountains etc). Then we moved onto acting out various dance movements to animals that might be living in these climates. My animal was a polar bear. The class had to attribute two dance movements to represent the said animal. All of the students were then lined up from one side of the classroom to another putting the animals in order from highest on the food chain to lowest. The groups had to dance out their animals in order in a form of a Dance Battle. An extension of this task led us to form groups based on various climates and having the entire group act out the elements in the climate as a dance. For example, the climate is a tropical forest and the elements include (monkey, sun, human, banana tree etc). For each element, a dance move is created by the group and then all of the dance moves are added together to create one unified dance.

Wild and Domestic Animals. Habitats. (Google Images)

This was a great lesson because it can appeal to all learners and students of varying ages. Students can identify with their favourite animal, think about the animal in a different context and come up with a creative form of expression through dance to represent their chosen animal.

Furthermore, our professor taught us a dance lesson that was cross-curricular with mathematics. The intro activity to this lesson included partnering up and using scarves as an artistic outlet to express symmetry. While paired up we were tasked with doing various dance movements with our scarves that were either symmetrical or asymmetrical and our partner had to copy as we danced. This exercise also dealt with mirroring, in which one person has to mirror exactly what their partner is doing.

Symmetry In Movement. (Google Slides)

Moving on from the intro activity, we introduced the concepts of probability into our dance lesson. In groups of 4, each person had to roll a dice. The group recorded how many times an odd number, an even number, the number 4, and the most common number that came up. Before, conducting this experiment we estimated what the outcome would be like. As a result of our outcomes, we had to make a dance. Our teacher gave us a sheet stating what dance movements were used for numbers 1-6 on the dice. Therefore, the numbers that we rolled signified what movements were going to be in our dance. Our peers watching had to guess what numbers we rolled based on our dances. This helps to promote critical thinking and focus for our students because they are attempting to decode the dance.

Below are two videos that show this probability dance activity from two groups of teacher candidates. As you can see in the videos there is lots of creativity, the group is moving together and there are some light-hearted laughing and smiles. It is important to laugh and have fun when taking part in interactive lessons. Not everyone is comfortable with dance and that is OK! As long as you are trying and having fun that is the most important part!!!!

In conclusion, this week taught us the value of providing/creating cross-curricular (science and math) lessons for our students as well as incorporating fun activities such as dance battles and probability games to capture our students' attention and promote their thinking/creativity in dance.  

Thanks For Reading Friends!