Week 5 - Heat & Light

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Week 4 - Force and Motion!

WEEK 4

I learned three students’ names and it makes me feel a little bit better about really knowing the students! We also had a blast today dancing.

To start with, we recapped on gravity and then I began to introduce our new subject…FORCE and MOTION. We talked about how force is a push or pull and motion is when an object moves from one place to another. We also talked about kinesphere and what swinging, sustained, and percussive movement looks like.

Then we went and danced the movement –trying pulling in a swinging, sustained, and percussive quality.

Then we danced all pushing movement in a swinging, sustained, and percussive quality.

I had all the students watch Mrs. Stilson, Mrs. Hempinkamp and I demonstrate three different movements. Each of us picked

PUSH or PULL

Then we each did our push or pull either swinging, sustained, or percussive. Then we taught each other our moves and put them together, and did them all at the same time as a dance.

Then I numbered off the students from 1-6 and it split them up into the 6 groups that I put numbers down in the corners and sides of the room. The students then had to make up a dance with the movement they were given about FORCE (push or pull) using either sustained, percussive, or swinging movement.

It was INCREDIBLE to see what the students came up with!! With my drum I went around the room and drummed a beat to what type of movement they were doing as a group. This helped build unity and established different energy qualities of movement in the students’ bodies.

Week 3 - Gravity

It’s the third week! This week I was pretty nervous. I started looking at the lesson subject for the week-GRAVITY. Gravity is so cool. Gravity is also pretty simple. I also found out that my mentor was coming to my class so I was more aware as I was preparing that I wanted to do a great job at helping the students understand the content and understand the dance movement.

SO I found a book and we danced the story of...Gravity is a Mystery by Franklyn M. Branley.

We read about how gravity pulls you to the center of the earth! We got on a figurative Space Exploration BUS

 and explored the universe! We started digging to the bottom of the earth, jumped safely "through" our hole to the ground, stood hands in a circle and pulled toward the center of the earth (or the center of the circle), pretended to roll down a hill and get swept away, pretended to be sitting and tried to jump from sitting to hitting our head on the ceiling (didn't work ;) ), and then we danced like we weighed 1,000 pounds and also like we weighed 10 pounds! We did all of this while the song The Best of Space Movie Themes was playing!

We ran out of time at the end for a performance, but we sure had a blast riding our Space Exploration Bus!

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I also learned a ton from my mentor this week. She is so dedicated to helping me succeed and I, once again, could see that reiterated when she sat with me for more than a couple of minutes after I taught so that I can learn and improve! I loved it!

Improvements to be made:

-Start to get to know the names of the students                                                                

-Emphasize and put ON THE BOARD the dance curriculum (I have had them do dance curriculum but haven’t actually been teaching it to them so that they know it).

-My drum is the most useful in the gym. Music is hard to hear, echoes, and I can’t get their attention as well with the music! I think I can still use music, but I would love to still use the drum.

~'Til next week!

Week 2 - The Earth and the Moon

Children are SO creative and SO ready to show their skills! I am absolutely loving working with these children at Spring Creek Elementary!

This week was our first week incorporating curriculum that the students are currently learning in the regular classroom. And wow oh wow, these kids are so smart!

At first we discussed the characteristics of the earth! We talked about how the earth mostly consists of clouds, water, and earth! So the. We danced the clouds like we were light and fluffy-walking lifted and leaping joyfully.

Second, we came back to the wall and discussed the characteristics of the moon. We talked about it having shallow holes on its surface, also having eruptive volcanoes, and the object itself being spherical.

THEN we discussed Axis, Rotation and Orbit! They caught on so fast.

We danced like we were the earth-which was like clouds floating, earth marching strong, and water going fast and pushing the air around.
Then we danced like the moon-carving for the shallow holes, exploding like the volcanoes on its surface, and spiraling like the spherical shape that the moon is.
We danced like the sun! Bright and percussive, sharp robotic movement


For our performance, the kids had to pick a partner. They had to dance around their partner (one of them being the earth rotating around its axis and the other partner being the moon revolving around the earth). The partner being the moon could either be carving, explosive, or spirally (like we talked about the characteristics of the moon). The second partner that was being the earth could dance floating, rushing, or marching.
The students didn't necessarily keep all of the energy qualities while dancing, but they sure loved dancing around each other!

LESSON PLANS AND PICTURES

First Week - Intro to DANCE!

Spring Creek Elementary is where dreams come true.

Going into this week I knew that I needed to create a lively lesson plan-one that would inspire the students to pay attention and keep constantly engaged! I became extremely nervous the day before, but as I practiced on my ever-willing husband I felt a sense of excitement fill my body.

The day-of I got more and more excited as the morning went on. 

Now let's get the actual lesson...

We started out with rules and procedures (which I'm learning makes the biggest difference) and I think the whole time they were just fascinated with my sweet drum I got from Jana Shumway. 

This lesson was simply an introduction to dance. I wanted to convince the students that dance is pretty much the coolest thing they will ever experience. To do that, we discussed and then danced the benefits of physical activity-taken from the core curriculum of 3rd grade physical education.

Health

Enjoyment

Challenging

Self-Expression

Social Interaction

For health we showed our guns and then jumped

For enjoyment we skipped in the pathway of a smiley face

For a challenge we did handstands while saying "safety first" on our way up.

For self-expression I had all the students pick a word that described them and then make a frozen shape that resembles that word

For social interaction the students go in groups of three and did hand waving movements, each at a different level (low, medium, high).

And the kids were amazing! I think there were about 27 students and only 2 of them didn't fully participate. Other than that, every student was participating 100%! The students were so creative with their shapes (showing their descriptive words smart, fast, or awesome!) and their forms of hand waving movements at different levels (some side-by-side, some in a straight line in front of each other). 

That's what got me so excited-the kids! They were so excited about the new movements. They were so eager to show me their handstands. They were so willing to try something new and to dance to the beat of my drum! 

Spring Creek Elementary is where dreams come true, meaning that I finally felt like a real teacher :) The students really enjoyed what they were learning-i mean they were LEARNING! And that's what matters the most to me.

LESSON PLAN AND PICTURES

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Arts Bridge

I am very eager to start teaching at Spring Creek Elementary in Provo for Mrs. Stilson's third grade grade class. I've met with Mrs. Stilson a few times now and have realized that she is an incredible teacher! She and I have sat down and discussed that I will be teaching alongside her science chapter. I'll be meeting with her class every Friday morning for thirty minutes starting October 28, 2016. I am very excited to share these experiences here on this blog!
See you again soon!

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