After two trips out to Cedar Valley Elementary to get to know my fantastic fifth grade class, I finally got to go teach for the first time. Because they had never danced before, my lesson focused on introducing the basics: movement and shapes. We learned about axial (in place, like an axle) and locomotive (travelling, like a train) movement, and then we learned about pathways. The dancers had lots of fun playing Follow the Leader to make different group pathways around the room, and then playing Pin Ball to make individual (and non-colliding) pathways around the room.
After learning about movement types and pathways, we learned about shapes. We learned that shapes can be straight or bent or curved or twisted or any combination of those in order to make our shapes interesting. We also learned that shapes can be done on different levels: low, medium, and high.
This is awesome. I did a similar first lesson, but we only went through locomotor words and shape options that you can make. I think this is because of our different age groups that we are teaching. Your students were older and were able to embody more quickly the words that were already a major part of their vocabulary. You packed a lot into one lesson, but it sounds like they were there with you and got it, so awesome job! Here is the link to my lesson plan that I created if you are ever teaching a similar lesson to younger children. http://dawnikawhite.blogspot.com/p/lesson-plans.html
ReplyDeleteLooks so fun!