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!