peer teaching reflection
Task Progression
The task progression for our dance is based on the theme of falling leaves. Our grade one class has been studying autumn so we thought that the concept of leaves would integrate nicely into their unit. We chose to use the words ‘drift,’ ‘turn,’ ‘whirl,’ ‘leap,’ and ‘settle’ as the movements that we would have our students explore and refine. Each of our words has the potential for much more exploration than we used in our peer teaching. We intend to explore each of Laban’s movement elements including “body awareness; space awareness; the awareness of weight, time, and flow; and the adaptation to partners and groups” (Bergmann, 1995, p.157).
We chose to begin the development of our dance with an introduction to shapes. As Mary Joyce wrote in her book ‘First Steps in Teaching Creative Dance to Children,’ “shapes are done first because they become the beginning and end of every movement, they are a basic part of all subsequent lessons, and they are the basic control” (1994, p.74). To introduce shapes to the class I pointed out that each of them was sitting in a slightly different shape and asked them on the count of three to make a different one. We then had our peers move out to the floor to explore shapes. We briefly mentioned that we plan on devoting most, if not an entire lesson, to developing the concept of shape with our grade ones. With our peers we jumped in and did a shortened version of our activity where they quickly changed shape and froze when I beat the drum. This worked well. We tried to give specific feedback and point out the unique examples to give students more ideas for how they could shape their bodies.
Next, we had them come back for a discussion about how leaves move when they begin falling from a tree and played the ‘drift/turn’ music. Then we had them explore the movements to the music, allowing them to make choices about when to drift and when to turn. We repeated the process with ‘whirl/leap’ and
The task progression for our dance is based on the theme of falling leaves. Our grade one class has been studying autumn so we thought that the concept of leaves would integrate nicely into their unit. We chose to use the words ‘drift,’ ‘turn,’ ‘whirl,’ ‘leap,’ and ‘settle’ as the movements that we would have our students explore and refine. Each of our words has the potential for much more exploration than we used in our peer teaching. We intend to explore each of Laban’s movement elements including “body awareness; space awareness; the awareness of weight, time, and flow; and the adaptation to partners and groups” (Bergmann, 1995, p.157).
We chose to begin the development of our dance with an introduction to shapes. As Mary Joyce wrote in her book ‘First Steps in Teaching Creative Dance to Children,’ “shapes are done first because they become the beginning and end of every movement, they are a basic part of all subsequent lessons, and they are the basic control” (1994, p.74). To introduce shapes to the class I pointed out that each of them was sitting in a slightly different shape and asked them on the count of three to make a different one. We then had our peers move out to the floor to explore shapes. We briefly mentioned that we plan on devoting most, if not an entire lesson, to developing the concept of shape with our grade ones. With our peers we jumped in and did a shortened version of our activity where they quickly changed shape and froze when I beat the drum. This worked well. We tried to give specific feedback and point out the unique examples to give students more ideas for how they could shape their bodies.
Next, we had them come back for a discussion about how leaves move when they begin falling from a tree and played the ‘drift/turn’ music. Then we had them explore the movements to the music, allowing them to make choices about when to drift and when to turn. We repeated the process with ‘whirl/leap’ and
Cited: Bergmann, Sheryle. (1995) Creative dance in the education curriculum: Justifying the unambiguous. Canadian Journal of Education. 20(2) Joyce, Mary. (1994) First steps in teaching creative dance to children. (3rd ed). Mayfield, California: Mayfield Publishing Company