Final Day

The end of the semester and last of my visits came. I wish there had been more time in this last semester, so that I could have taught these children more. There were two things I did not get two that I wish I had. One was capitalization and punctuation and the other was the central message of the story. Upon reflection, I probably should have done the central message lesson for the last day, but originally when I planned this out with Mrs. Quick we decided to do a Jewish dance, because of their Holidays Around the World thing. So, that's what I did. First I told them a little about Jewish clothing and the reason they dance barefoot. Then I taught them the dance. I made the dance a little harder, because I thought they could handle it. However, it turns out that grapevines are actually a bit too hard for most of them. So, I made some adjustments and the dance turned out to be almost the same thing I had before. Kori, my mentor, was there for this last visit and gave good advice. She said that it can be difficult to teach children at this age folk/traditional dances, but something you can do is take aspects of that style and allow them to explore those movements. For example, some Jewish dances tend to be bouncy and light on their feet. And because their clothing permitted it, their movement tends to be bigger than you would see in other countries. So, something I could have done would have been to allow them to explore bouncy and light movement, while the movement is still big. Then, we could have either made a dance together, or allowed them to improvise for each other and see what things their classmates observed. Since Kori was there, I had them do the Gingerbread Man story one more time to show her. The kids had fun with that. :) And that ended my experience with Mrs. Quick's 1st grade class. I learned a lot and wish I could try it again. There are somethings I would have changed, but overall I gained a lot of good experience of what kinds of things work and what does not. This is really a great program! It allows the growth of everyone involved and I would like to think that I have become a bit better of a teacher because of it. I also hope that the teacher I worked with, Mrs. Quick, has gained some good ideas that she can use in her teaching in the future.

The Gingerbread Man

At Silvercrest Elementary they have a different theme for each week in December. One week was about the Grinch and another was about Gingerbread stories. I wanted to continue teaching the children on recognizing the difference between major and minor events, so I decided to do one more story and since it was the Gingerbread stories week, I went with the Gingerbread Man. Like I did for Starry Safari, I had the kids gather around as I read the book to them. Then we talked about the major and minor events of the story. They were identifying the events faster than with the first story! After we discussed the story, we started the book over and began putting movement to it. The story began with the making of the gingerbread man. First with his head, then body, then arms and legs. I liked this part, because it gave the students a chance to explore different ways of moving different body parts. As we continued the story there were some pages that I decided to skip. Before I skipped the page I asked them why I could skip it? Was it a major or minor event? Does the story line change if I skipped it? Some were faster at responding than others, but they came to the correct conclusion. It was a minor event that did not change the course of the story. The first few times I had the kids dance the story, I allowed and even encouraged them to shout, "Run! Run, as fast are you can! You can't catch me I'm the Gingerbread Man!" They had fun with that. After a few times through I had them try it as silently as they could. I personally liked the silent way better. :) I did not like it just because it was quiet, but because they weren't using words to convey the story, they were using their movement. I also had a little fun with the ending. At the end of the story the fox tossed its head, throwing the Gingerbread Man into the air, and with a SNAP of its jaws the fox ate the Gingerbread Man whole. For this ending, I had all the kids do their coolest jump (signifying the fox tossing its head) and when they landed they clapped their hands (signifying the SNAP of the fox's jaws). It was a lot of fun and I think the kids enjoyed it. Again towards the end of class, I split them up into two groups and had half of them watching and the other half dancing. Then, after the first group danced we discussed what the "audience members" saw. What events did they see? Were those major or minor events, etc. By the end of class, I felt confident that the students understood this concept pretty well. It was GREAT!

A Slightly Unexpected Lesson

I came in expecting to teach the Gingerbread Man story and ended up doing a Jewish dance. During Christmas time Silvercrest Elementary does something called, Holidays Around the World. This is where the class gets to visit another classroom and learn about a different country and one of their holidays. So, the day I came in I did not have my usual class. It was another class that came in to learn about Hanukkah, a Jewish holiday. To help teach them about this holiday Mrs. Quick asked my if I could teach the class a little Jewish dance. Thanks to my world dance classes at BYU I did have some experience in Yemenite or Jewish dances and was able to pull something together on the fly. The dance was done in a circle and I had them take four step to the right followed by the Yemenite step. This is a three-step move with a quick, quick, slow timing. I had them step on their right foot, rock back to their left and then cross their right in front of the left, which prepared them to start walking to the left. Then, they would took four more steps to the left followed by the Yemenite step. This whole time they were holding hands, but now I had them let go and walk to the center. They took four steps to the center and clapped down low, then they took four steps back and clapped up high. I had them repeat that, then I had them turn in a small circle and grab hands again to start the dance over. The kids did a pretty good job with it. The whole changing directions thing was pretty tough for them, but with a little help they did alright. Mrs. Quick and I had planned to do this on the last day with her class as a fun wrap up, so I was pretty excited to see how they would do when the time came. But, we aren't there yet. We still have to do the Gingerbread Man story. That will be for the next visit.

Starry Safari Part 2

Phew! There was so much to get to in such a short time that Starry Safari took two days to really complete. I started off today's lesson with a review of what major and minor events are. We defined them then we went through the pages/movement that we had done the previous visit. With each page I asked them if it was a major or minor event. It took a little while, but they started getting it. We continued to review and explore more movement, then when I thought they had it down pretty well I split them up into two groups and had them perform it for their classmates. Whichever group was sitting down I had them watch for the major and minor events. I wanted to see if they could see the different events through the movement. There is one minor event in the story where the main character is "swinging with monkeys over head," the kids always mentioned that one for a minor event. They really liked swinging with monkeys. :) The kids did well with this and had a lot of fun. Now, since Christmas was coming up I chose one more story to do with them on the next visit...the Gingerbread Man! :)

Starry Safari Part 1

Okay! Well, there was a month long break between the second and third lesson, because Mrs. Quick was off-track for November. But now that December had come we are back on track! Now, that they know how to create a sentence we started talking about recognizing major and minor events in a story. When you put multiple sentences together they create a story and the story I used for today's lesson was called "Starry Safari". It's a cute book with really good action words. First I had the kids gather around and we had story time. Before I started I told the children to look for who the main character was and what the major and minor events were. I read through the book then I asked them what they found. The main character wasn't a problem for the to spot, but finding the major and minor events took some prompting. After that, we started putting movement to the story. The book was too long to put movement to every page, so I picked a few of the minor events that I thought had good movement potential. And of course, I kept the two major events as well. This book was really great to use, because it allowed the students to explore a variety of movement and timings. There was staccato movement, running, suddenly stops, shaping, moving quietly on a low level and more. The kids picked up on the movement really well and did a great job! :) They especially liked the ending. There is one part in the story that talks about a lion that is about to strike and that the main character need to SCARE HIM OFF BY ROARING BACK!!! So, I let the kids roar right there. To keep them from getting out of control I had a signal that they had to follow. I would stretch my right hand out in front of me signaling them to roar as loud as they could, then I would draw my hand back into a fist signaling them to stop. I also played with crescendos by slowly stretching my hand out in front. This was a fun little game in the middle of the story that kept their attention. That's where it ended for that day.

Day 2

For the second visit to Mrs. Quick's class, I reviewed nouns and verbs from the first lesson and added a new concept; adjectives. I brought in a couple different objects to demonstrate different adjectives. I brought a feather fan and wanted them to move soft like feathers. I also brought brought in a cape and had to move like a cape flowing in the wind. That was a further verb rather than an adjective, but I thought the kids would like it. I also brought a couple of sheets of colored paper. One was yellow and I asked them what they thought of when they saw yellow. Most said it reminded them of the sun and being happy! Yes! I told them when you are happy you move really big with lots of energy. I had them show me how big they could move and encouraged to find air moments like jumping and leaping. I also encouraged them to find ways of moving on the ground while maintaining the idea of big energetic movement. The second sheet of colored paper I brought was blue. This one didn't go quite the way I thought it would. Again, I asked the children what they thought of when they looked at this color and most said, "the sky." I was hoping for answers like winter and being cold or the phrase feeling blue or sad. Unfortunately, I think the shade of blue I used was to bright. I think I would have had more success if I had chosen a darker blue. Still, I agreed with they things they said and then suggested further things blue could represent. Afterwards I had them try moving like they were sad. I explained that when you are sad you don't want to move big, but your movement would be small and a little slow. Then I had them move like they were cold; most of them began shaking and shivering. It was a great start! Instead of just shaking their arms I encouraged them to shake using different body parts and try shaking on both a high level and a low level. After they explored movement options with these different words I split them up into three groups. Kori Wakamatsu (my great mentor!!) took one group, Mrs. Quick to another and I took the last one. I gave each group two sets of noun words, verbs and adjectives and had them create a sentence. After creating their sentence the groups took turns dancing it while the rest of the class watched. The audience's job was to see if the group dancing did an accurate job of dancing their sentence. For instance, if their sentence was, "The sad lion shivered in the wind," was the student's movement small or big? Were they shaking or bouncing around joyfully? Did their movement reflect the sentence? I like the activity, but next time I would give better instructions. After the class I talked with my mentor, Kori, and discovered that the children did not realize that they would be dancing their sentence and felt a little unprepared for it. And that in one group they would trying to use all the words given and ended up creating one big sentence, rather than just one simple sentence using one verb, noun and adjective. The moral of the story here is to be sure that I explain things properly so there is no miscommunication or confusion. Another thing I learned after talking to Kori is how I should have differentiated the movement between verbs and adjectives. Verbs move through the space, but I should have taught adjectives as axial movement. Axial movement is movement you can do without taking a step. I really wish I had thought of that! I think I would have gotten are larger variety of movement and it would have made more sense to the students. This lesson has great potential and I think that after working out the bugs the students will learn more and have a lot of fun.

First Day

I had the opportunity to go into Ms. Quick's first grade class at Silvercrest Elementary and teach dance. It was a great experience and I learned a lot. The goal that Mrs. Quick and I had was to increase the students understanding of Language Arts through dance. So, for the first day I taught them about verbs and nouns. For every noun that I gave them they had to create a shape that reminded them of that noun. For example, I said, "make a shape like a clock!" then they all would give me a round shape. The noun that I gave them that I liked the best was snowflake. I got a large variety of shapes with this one. I got high shapes, low shapes, symmetrical shapes and asymmetrical shapes. It was AWESOME! After nouns, I taught them about verbs. I would give them a verb and they would have to carry that movement throughout the shape. They understood verbs pretty well, so instead of having them just run around the space, I encouraged them to explore different ways of running. I had them try running high, low, slow, fast, etc. At the end of the class I had them split into two groups and I had the first group dance a short phrase that included one noun and two verbs. The second group or audience had to see if they could figure out what the nouns and verbs were, then the groups would switch. They did a really good job!