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Teacher Reflections Laura's Thoughts... Reflection 1: Today Breanne and I taught our first lesson at Hillcrest to the grade one class. What I noticed almost immediately was how well behaved this class was. When talking to the teacher afterwards she also commented on how well behaved they are. As well as being well behaved they were very excited about dance. One great thing about grade one is that you can still call it dance. You don’t have to worry about the boys getting nervous about dancing, or boys and girls not wanting to be partners. In fact, we had a boy in the class actually ask to demonstrate some moves that he had learned in the dance class he takes after school. We let him and his sister perform the moves for us (it was extremely cute!). We really focused on safety today, with moving in your own space as our focus. The students definitely understood why you want to move in your own space but during our activities some of the boys had to be reminded that the point was to be moving on their own and not with somebody else. There were lots of reminders throughout the lesson. With skipping, I was really excited to see how excited they were about it! I think they could have just skipped in circles around the gym the whole class. We also introduced the music. The students are really good at keeping the beat; that’s going to be very helpful for them, this music is very fast and understanding the beat will just make it a bit easier for them to focus on the movements. Reflection 2: Our visit today was awesome. I was so impressed by the improvements in skipping in just two lessons. We really focused on remembering what we talked about last class: skipping in different directions/pathways, in different ways, forwards/backwards/circles. The kids really remembered. We had to do some more work with imagery, reminding them that the dance is about play and what would that look like (no elephant feet!). We introduced hiding shapes today and it was so cool to see that stuff you do in peer teaching actually works in the real world of teaching! We had to clarify that it wasn’t ok to hide behind benches, or on the stairs, and that it really was just using your imagination. We were able to see some really cool shapes. There were students hiding their faces behind their hands, lying flat on the floor, and twisting their bodies to hide behind objects. One thing I did notice, when we showed some student examples it often turned out that the next activity a lot of the students would do what was shown in the example. This is not necessarily bad (students could get really good ideas from examples) but we did reiterate that everyone was unique and creating interesting shapes. We also encouraged the students to use different shapes every time. When they play around with the idea of different shapes it just gives them more to draw on during the dance. Mid-way through the lesson I think we both knew that we weren’t going to get all that we had planned done. We’re going to take out some patterns for next class. There’s just not enough time. But they’re having fun and developing some great skills. I wish this was my class and we could tie this in with some language arts activities, I think it would be really exciting to see the students really develop a broad sense of these action words. Reflection 3: Today we did a lot of practice. We reviewed our imagery and listened to the music a lot. I think that listening to the music is going to be a huge key to this dance’s success. We changed the dance and took out a large portion in the middle and we are left with 4 skip and hide and 3 skip and jump. So, we introduced partners to the dance today. It went very well. I will actually admit that it went a lot better that I expected it to. The confusion came when students had to remember who was skipping at what time. We had to do a lot of questioning i.e. “if partner A is skipping what should partner B be doing”, “if partner B is skipping what should partner A be doing”. A lot of repetition was needed. Because we were adding the new concept of partners to the dance we also had to remind students about skipping. Sometimes they were so concerned about keeping track of their partner the skipping became simply the means of getting to the space their partner was in. We had the students perform for each other and I think they really enjoyed it. Again, these kids are so well behaved it’s unbelievable! Reflection 4: Our final day! It was Friday at 2:00 and the students were a bit excited. The good thing is they were excited about dancing. They couldn’t wait to start doing the movement patterns with the music. When we put them into partners again we had a few more problems than last class. Some students wanted to be with the same partner as last time, some students didn’t want to be with the same partner. Our reasoning for switching partners was this a) it gave the students an opportunity to work together with someone new and to explore that relationship, and b) for those who had partners who weren’t enthusiastic it gave a chance to be with someone who was really trying hard to understand the dance. We were extremely pressed for time during this class. I think if we were to do it again we would need about 6 lessons. We tried to rush the students to complete the entire dance but I wonder if we should have just left it where it was. The ‘collapse’ was a really great part of the dance and it sort of got lost by the wayside. The students didn’t really have the chance to enjoy the movement (collapse) that they would have had we devoted more time to its instruction. We were given a book that the class made and we’ll put some of the pictures up on the website. They were so thankful that we came to teach them dance. Also, the teacher told us to come back any time we wanted so we know that she appreciated it too!
Breanne's Thoughts... Lesson 1: This first lesson was quite illuminating to me. I have never taught grade one and I was rather hesitant and unsure of what to expect. We spent most of this lesson working on skipping and moving in the empty space to see where our students were at and to judge how much of the dance we could actually get through in only four lessons. Well, their range of abilities was quite diverse; some could skip in time with the music and others could hardly skip at all. Most grade ones cannot skip backwards but are more than floored to have the chance to try. I love that students of this age are so willing to demonstrate in front of the class. Anytime we asked for a demonstrator, all the hands would shoot up and they would all want the chance to show the class how they did something or what they knew. One little boy informed us that he took dance lessons outside of school and was so excited about demonstrating in front of the class that he asked if he could show us what a sashay was. I think the best part about this lesson was that before Laura and I arrived at the school neither of us were thrilled about the prospect of having to teach at that moment in time, but afterwards we were both re-energized and thrilled to be working with these students. In terms of how all this applies directly to the theory of the class Lesson 2: The second lesson we taught really started to develop our dance. We introduced the imagery in this lesson and actually began piecing together the dance steps. We also presented the imagery as the stimulus for dance in this lesson.. In terms of a stimulus for movement as Boorman talks about it her book we have used a stimulus that the students connect to immediately – recess, and playing hide and seek. The idea that "children gain tremendous satisfaction from portraying certain words,” as Boorman states in chapter six of her book is the underlying factor for our dance. We have a series of words that we want the students to portray and have fun in doing so. We wanted our students to take the skipping they worked on in the previous lesson and apply the energy and emotional qualities of a child playing at recess to the movement. The students were very responsive to this imagery. They had lots of things to tell us about how you play at recess, and once again they all wanted to show us how they could skip in an excited or playful manner. The development of the hiding shape was probably the most memorable part of the lesson. We discussed and practiced what they would look like if they were hiding behind a tree, under a table, etc. as our lesson plan states, but when we asked the students to pick a hiding shape they liked and show us, most ran for the sides of the room to hide under the benches or beside the tables. Continuous reinforcement of "I can see some people aren't in their open space," and "Can you dance under the bench, what would be a better hiding shape for dance?" was needed to keep the students on task. But, by the end of the lesson, everyone was in an open space in a hiding shape and when asked, they knew what they were hiding behind. One student was behind a rock, and one was so cleverly peeking out of a closet with his hands in front of his face. I wish my classmates could have seen the incredible hiding shapes these students came up with. One final note, about these students - when we put the 7+1 skipping and hiding pattern together, they were extremely successful at keeping the beat and dancing to the music - much better than I would have ever expected. Lesson 3: The third lesson we taught put most of the dance together except for the ending. This lesson also developed the AB partner relationship which took up most of the time in the lesson. The students picked up really quickly on the fact that while partner A is dancing, partner B is frozen and vice versa. Although they could verbalize it well, the practice of staying still while your partner was dancing was a much harder concept to actually do. But, I think they really understood what they were doing and the imagery they were portraying. When we sat down at the circle to start the lesson, one girl asked right away if we were going to be doing the hide and seek dance again. That was a really positive reaction for me, because I really like to know that I am getting through to the students and that they are actually enjoying and engaged in what we are doing. We rushed the students a bit at the end, because we were short on time, (as always seems the case) and rushed them into skipping and jumping. We had to modify our dance from the one presented in class, because we simply did not have enough time to teach and develop thoroughly all the sections. We changed the middle section to complement the first and the students were to work in partners and skip for 7 then jump on 8, rather than playing and jumping. Once again their speed at picking up the dance to the music was astonishing and their ability to dance lightly on their feet on command was wonderful. I feel like any thing we asked they were able and willing to do. The partner relationship added a unique twist to the dance, as I looked I could see frozen (or mostly frozen) students hiding and waiting on edge for their turn to start dancing. Lesson 4: Ahh... The final lesson. We had a lot planned for this lesson and we lost close to ten minutes of gym time because the previous class did not leave on time, and then the gymnastics mats and equipment needed to be put away. But, the realities of being a classroom teacher are that sometimes you lose some of your gym time. We spent too much of this lesson reviewing the previous aspects of the dance, which was needed, but left us with very little time to teach the ending. And, for the first time of all the lessons, we had issues with our cd player skipping in the middle of the dance - I think maybe some of our young dancers were forgetting that they were not elephants, but quiet, light-footed dancers. On a positive note, working through the concept of collapse was quite fun. We demonstrated in a circle all the different ways we could collapse, and they all had a slightly different take on the word. Also, having twenty grade ones collapsing onto the circle from a run is a bit of a safety concern and one boy was able to verbalize that "they must pretend they are in a bubble and if they get too close to anyone their bubble pops, which is bad." Wow! The teacher we were working with has done an amazing job of classroom management and developing appropriate gym behaviors with these students. They have been truly a joy for me these last two weeks. The creative movement we designed also takes into consideration the idea of sudden and sustained movements and the tension between them and we were able to see this tension in our students as they danced. The students were skipping and hiding and running in a sustained fashion and then jumping and collapsing as a sudden movement in contrast to the other movements. Like Boorman suggests we want our grade ones to learn to feel and understand the time difference between and sudden and sustained movement and be able to represent with their bodies the qualities of each. In conclusion to this lesson we had our students run through the entire dance one last time, which turned it to a bit of a disaster because the music skipped and they lost their place near the end, but they had fun and were engaged in physical activity and movement sequences which is really the purpose of dance in grade one. |