Teacher Reflections
Geoff's Reflection
Teaching the dance
to an actual class of K/1 students went very well. On the
first lesson at Braefoot, things went better than we had
anticipated. We started by introducing the story to the
students, and brainstorming some movement words for both Woozles
and Pooh Bears. Once this was done we had all the students
practice each movement. Originally we thought the first
lesson would end here, but all the students picked it up very
quickly. As a result, we had time to introduce working with
the different movements in partners.
On the second lesson, we first reviewed the story, and the
movements we had practiced last day. We then continued the
partnered movements in beats of 8. The students had some
difficulty with this, as they were unsure when they were supposed
to move and when to freeze. To help students, we discussed
beats of eight, and had them count with us. Christine and I
also demonstrated the movement to the students. After this,
the students noticeably improved, but they still needed a little
more direction.
On lesson three, we continued to practice the partnered
movements. This time, however, we added a cueing system to
help the students. Christine would tap on the clogs, once
for Pooh Bears, and twice for Woozles to let them know when they
should be moving. This worked incredibly well to coordinate
the students’ movements. We then began working on the
circle movement. We found that having the kids form two
circles was too difficult for them, so we had to change the dance
from what is planned on this web site. Instead of two
circles, the students formed one large circle holding hands (in
16 beats), walked to the left for 16 beats, walked into the
centre for 8, and back out for 8, then to the right again for 16
beats. At this point there is a pause in the music, and
students then march with their partner for 16 beats. Next
is the final “beware” in the song, where all the
students expand, and then collapse back into their sleeping
positions as the music dies away. Even with these changes,
students still needed many additional cues and signals to help
them get into the circle and be ready for each new movement.
The cues were very important to helping the students focus.
We discussed with students how to get into the circle, and how
far apart they should be from each other. We also placed a
hoop in the center of the circle to help them know where they
needed to be. Christine and I practiced with them several
times. By the end of the fourth lesson, the students were
doing much better. A fifth lesson was spent practicing and
refining all the movements. By the end of this, the kids
were ready. The kids performed their dance for the rest of
the school a few days later, and it was fantastic.
Christine's Reflection
The first and most important thing to realize when teaching a dance to kindergarten and grade one students is that you can not fail... they are just too cute! When setting out to teach the Pooh Bear dance, it was with this in mind that I let go of my fears and just went for it. What I found out was that my partner Geoff and I did not just teach a dance, we created a work of art!
Geoff and I had a lot of fun creating the dance and the imagery to go along with the music, "Heffalumps and Woozles." After we had chosen our music, we had some fun trying to put movements together to bring to life the Pooh story which we wrote especially for the dance.
Once we had figured out the movement series, and had written it down in the dance analysis sheet, we went to the school to teach our first lesson. We experienced a great high coming away from that lesson. The children responded so well to the Pooh Bear theme and were right into the movements skipping like Pooh and creeping like a Woozle. With each lesson we learned a lot from the children as well as from the process of teaching a dance we had made ourselves. We found that our original dance needed to be modified in order to work with the age group of the students we were working with, as described more fully in Geoff's reflection. Also we discovered ways to help the students with the difficult counting series by hitting clogs together at certain times during the dance to help give the students signals as to what they should be doing.
During the process there were times when I thought, "wow, I can't believe these children are getting this so easily!", and times when I thought, "Oh, no, will they get this in time for the performance?". In the end, I will have to admit, they were the best little Pooh Bears and Woozles I had ever seen. Not only did they have all the dance steps down... they were also so cute!
Creating and teaching a dance is an exciting process. There was so much to learn as we went along. We learned from our professors at the university, from our classmates, from the teacher of the students we taught, and most of all, from the students themselves. Thank-you for all your help.
Main Menu Introduction Dance Analysis Section 1 Section 2 Section 3 Section 4 Section 5 Management Suggestions Assessment Strategy Teacher Reflections