Thursday, 21 February 2013

Dance Pedagogy: Children

This course examined approaches, methodologies and issues surrounding teaching dance to children from the ages of 3 to 10, primarily based on Rudolf Laban's elements of movement and Dewey's work on experimental learning. All teaching methodologies, techniques and exercises were explored theoretically and practically leading to the creation of lessons for teaching dance to children of a selected age group. The benefits and approaches to arts/dance integration in both the elementary achool curriculum and dance studio were discussed and critically assessed.

What did we do?
  • Discussed and applied theoretical and practical knowledge of methodologies and approaches related to and supporting the teaching of creative dance and technique to children
  • Created original age and level appropriate lesson plans, successfully executed them and received/exchanged feedback
 Lesson Plan I
Title: Space and out the space (Earth and outside the Earth)
Theme: Superficial exploration of things that are outside the Earth
Age group: 9-10
Duration: 45 min
Space: Studio
Equipment: CD and books (about the planets)
General goal: Deepen the knowledge about outside the Earth through dance movements.
Learning objectives:
1.    Little knowledge about what shapes body can create. It includes not only frozen shapes but as well as shapes as we move.
2.    Knowledge about weight (strong/light).
3.    Little knowledge of levels.

 Introduction/Warm-up (5-10’) (Music-Children of the Sun)
As students enter the classroom, they sit down in the circle. Tutor introduces the theme and asks students to think about Earth and outside the Earth. What can we find outside the earth? Planets, aliens, stars, rockets, astronauts, UFO (Unidentified Flying Object) …
Concepts of warm-up: be able to show all findings (planets, aliens, stars…) in movement. Students will be able to develop the understanding of different shapes body can create. Children are divided into two teams.
·         Run, face your team, make an oval shape with your arms, crossing legs do a turn, run back towards your team (PLANET)
·         Run, face your team, do your own alien shape, run back towards your team (ALIEN)
·         Run, face your team, do a star jump, run back towards your team (STAR)
·         Run, face your team, jump with the arms stretched above the head (ROCKET)
·         Travel across the space thinking about as light weight as possible (ASTRONAUT IN SPACE)
·         UFO (Children have the possibility to create their own Unidentified Flying Object. It must include travelling across the space).
 Transition: form lines, facing the teacher. One team forms one line and second team forms the other line (it depends on number of children).
Main body (20’)
Concept: be able to perform short dance ‘OUTSIDE THE EARTH’ which contains movements from warm-up. Exploration of gas and rock: children will gain a little knowledge about weight (rock-heavy, gas-light) as well as levels.
·         Teach a short ‘OUTSIDE THE EARTH’ dance (10’) (Music-Flying Machine)
·         Groups of students perform the “learned dance” in front of peers (5’)
Transition: to the same teams as in the beginning
·         Gas and rock. Gas is very light and floats, rock is very heavy and solid. Cross the space once exploring gas’ qualities, once rock’s  qualities (5’)
·         Creating one big planet from rock and gas. Improvisation using movements learnt to describe the all findings in a planet. Free improvisation allows to use all movement vocabulary learnt in this class or explore their own movements related to this theme. (5’)
Transition: sit down in the circle
Relaxation and Conclusion (5-10’)
·         Discussion of what students have learnt from this session (qualities, movements, etc.) Brief review of the covered material
·         Sharing the emotions
·         Sharing the problems
Outlook on the next session: Continue exploring the outside space, mainly planets what includes creating your own planet and recognizing the differences and main features between already existing ones.


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