Introduction
Dance and creative movement in the classroom are robust teaching tools that ensure students retain and think critically about academic content. “Creative dance has the potential to open up new worlds for…students” (Gilbert p. 3). Incorporating movement into the classroom is simple. First, movement comes naturally to every child born in every culture, according to Jennings (2017). Jennings stated that children naturally move when they hear movement and rhythm. As a mother, I felt it when I played fast music and my infant responded in-utero. As an early interventionist and an educator, I see this in my career working with children from birth to high school. Very young children who are just pulling up and cruising along
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4). And our goal as teachers is to teach concepts through any means possible. How lucky for us that concepts and dance go hand-in-hand, as is evidenced by creative dance’s relationship with Bloom’s Taxonomy.
Bloom’s Taxonomy and the importance of students being able to ask and answer multi-levelled questions to lead to deeper understanding and use information to create is utmost in any teacher education program. Fowler (1994) emphasized that the taxonomy was addressed by the arts and addressing higher-order thinking in this way, helped remove “textbook” answers and rote memorization from learning and recall. Fowler affirmed that the arts actually required a student to develop a deep understanding of content through connections to themselves and their own cultures. He further asserted that it enabled them to learn to show and express that understanding and connection through various modalities. And Fowler challenged teachers to test his observations and observe that students do this at the highest levels of the taxonomy. Our state-adopted curriculum, Everyday Math, introduces this concept for cones, cylinders, spheres, prisms and cubes in one lesson using anchor charts and the creation of a 3-D shape museum. The complexity of being able to identify 2-D faces on 3-D shapes,
Dance began as a form of communication and storytelling. Thousands of years ago dancing served as a way for people to tell a story and helped distract themselves of the hardships they faced. Furthermore, dance was a form of storytelling through communication, which then turned into using storytelling through dance as entertainment. According to the History World, many dancers during the BC time danced in front of only a few people to get a story across. That later turned into hundreds of thousands of people as dance was used by many. Today, dance is also a form of entertainment and storytelling, but in a modern sense. However, today perfection and technique are stressed more than they were in the past. Yet, the passion for dance has not changed. Many dancers who share this passion also have many of the same qualities. Among a discourse community of trained dancers, one expects to find individuals who are healthy and active athletes, expect perfection from themselves through competition, and religiously attend dance performances.
“What are you even doing here? I have never seen such flawed technique in all my years as a choreographer.” The words echoed throughout the medical college auditorium. Impelled by the admonishment in front of my peers, I persevered in my endeavor to improve upon my dancing prowess and by the final year of medical school was leading the college dance team. The above mentioned undertaking further spawned an interest for the discipline of Latin Ballroom which lead to participation at the national level. The unwavering focus and persistence even in the face of unfavorable odds is more broadly reflective of my approach towards learning, both academic and extracurricular. This has been instrumental in achieving stellar academic outcomes including being ranked nationally in the top 0.0004 percent in the premedical test and the top 0.6 percent in the common aptitude test for management training.
Students will gain an understanding of how form in dance and music relate. They will increase their knowledge of movement vocabulary by applying it through choreography. Weekly exposure to new movements
A non-standardized curriculum allows students to focus on higher level thinking skills. Students are encouraged to learn from each other. Students are encouraged to challenge each other. Teacher’s use Bloom’s Taxonomy to have student think deeper into concepts. Instead of students learning ten concepts over the course of a year, students learn six that are more in depth. Students use a variety of alternative assessments to show their depth of knowledge. A student can choose how to display their knowledge. Students may give a presentation, create a 3-D model, design a PowerPoint, or write a story or a variety of other ways to present their ideas.
important foundation in understanding the broader scope of how dance can be seen as a
We will have a quick aerobic workout for our warm up, we all will stand in big circle and each child will take turns of suggesting a new move. Then we will start our daily activity, which will be dancing. The students will move to stimuli such as rhythm, beat, music, and words. Different movement patterns that resemble
Students will improvise and adapt the skills and knowledge they learnt through the example dance to explore their own emotions and display of these.
This level of learning is used throughout life as a child for learning/developing and as an adult for social purposes and building relationships. I felt that this article gave me a superior understanding of the ways a community can change a group of peoples lives through dance and learning. This article made me feel aware of the ways my nephew moves and learns. As a child, I took dance classes and after reading this article I realized how dance helped me develop into an adult. This article inspired me to understand that a child needs activity and I hope to promote that for my children one
This chapter takes a broad look at the relationship between human movement, framed as dance, and important identities such as religion, ethnicity, gender, and social status. While not specifically focused on issues of identity in America, this chapter will provide an important foundation in understanding the broader scope of how dance can be seen as a representation of cultural values, which will underlie the remainder of our coursework.
Dance is one of the most beautiful, expressive forms of art known to mankind. It expresses joy, love, sorrow, anger, and the list truly goes on for all the possible emotions that it can convey. Dance not only can express how one feels, but it can tell a story or even be used to praise a higher power. Dance has intricately played an important role to every culture over the course of time. Two forms of dance that have not only stood against the test of time but have influenced the development of other various styles of dance is none other than Classical Ballet and Modern Dance.
This chapter takes a broad look at the relationship between human movement, framed as dance, and important identities such as religion, ethnicity, gender, and social status. While not specifically focused on issues of identity in America, this chapter will provide an important foundation in understanding the broader scope of how dance can be seen as a representation of cultural values, which will underlie the remainder of our coursework.
This paper explores my main question, “how does movement through dance affect the mental and emotional dimensions of wellness?” I will explore the many unknown benefits that come from dance as well as share expressions of my personal thoughts on the subject. I will also share my personal experiences as well as others’ experiences with dance. In the research portion of my paper, I will cite studies supporting both the mental and emotional benefits of dance. This paper will also explore the perspective of a professor of dance, as well as the lived experiences of actual dance students. My interview will support my paper as it reinforces the findings in literature. I will discuss my future plans on the subject of mental and emotional dance; stressing the need for individuals to dance as the benefits can be
Dance is said to have existed prior to the invention of written languages, and was perhaps an essential aspect of storytelling for the passing of knowledge and information from generation to generation. And it has been, since time immemorial, a part of every culture and religion as a means of self and collective expression.
The objective in lesson 1, we can see does not only broaden their understanding by introducing a new word and its meaning, but also demonstrates how this can become a stimulus for dance creation. As with lesson 2 they learn to use every day movements as a starting point for movement design and this is continued in lesson 3
The first reason why teachers should integrate dance into education is that dance increases students’ attention and reaches students of different learning types. One study was done to determine whether lessons that incorporate movement were effective at generating student’s situational interest. They compared the outcomes of movement and non movement lessons in second and third grade reading and math classes. The teachers provided one week of lessons that included movement and one week of lessons that did not. Students were asked to use their bodies to illustrate specific concepts they were taught. At the end of the study, the teachers rated students’ interest levels, and they found that students were more excited by and engaged in the lessons that integrated movement than those that did not. Surprisingly, they also found that the dancing did not hinder the amount of content learned during the lesson (Lindt and Miller). Dance could be a