"Winter Olympics"

Creative Dance

Introduction

Dance Analysis

Section 1

Section 2 

Section 3

Section 4

Lesson Plans

Assessment Strategy

Teacher Reflections

Dr Hopper Website
 

This website contains the breakdown of a creative dance developed based on the use of an imagery idea, phrases of a piece of music, action words and a task progression.  The students' movements are refined using Laban's movement concepts (Wall and Murray, 1994).  

The website breaks the dance down based on connection to the BC IRP for PE (K - 7), analysis of the dance (Boorman, 1973), the dance task progression broken down into sections, management suggestions from teaching the dance, assessment ideas and finally reflections from the teachers teaching the content.

Here is a teacher Task Progression for the dance.

About the creators:

Monika Lee and Carla Nickel created this website as part of their creative dance unit plan for a Creative Movement Class at the University of Victoria.  We taught the “Winter Olympics” dance to a grade 3/4 class of 23 students.  The response we received was that of overwhelming enthusiasm and excitement for the dance.  

The creative process we went through to compose this dance has been recorded and documented throughout this website.  We started with a simple idea and it grew into a dance sequence that we are very proud of and excited to share.

References:

Carline, S. (2005). Children who dance: A handbook for teachers of elementary school children. University of Victoria Coursepack, Victoria, Canada.

Boorman, J. (1973). Dance and language experiences with children. Don Mills, Ontario, Longman Canada Ltd.

Wall, J. and N. Murray (1994). Children and movement. Dubuque, IA, Wm. C. Brow Publishers.

Resources:

Music by Johann Strauss "Radetsky March" 

Click here to download music file Radetsky March.mp3