Today was great! Instead of doing an interdisciplinary lesson, we had a day to review all of the interesting elements we have learned about dance this year, in order to prepare them to put together a mini lecture demonstration (or LecDem as we like to call them) to show what they have learned and can now do.
First off, Mrs. Findlay led the warmup today! She did a fantastic job with the Brain Dance. She was confident and clear and the students followed her well. They were also (pleasantly!) surprised to see that she could teach “dance,” too. I was proud of her and proud of the students. J It will be important to continue to allow her to build rapport with her students as a dance teacher so she can do this all on her own once I’m gone. We’ll continue to have her teach parts of the lesson in the next few weeks.
Another great thing about today was I had a chance to see that the students really have been learning what I’ve been trying to teach them. It was a good assessment of all my previous behavioral objectives – whether the students have been internalizing the things we’ve been talking about and exploring. We made a word wall on the board with the dance elements we have learned about and the other concepts we have integrated. Even though some of the words are long and cumbersome, once they remembered them, they were able to show me with their bodies and respond to my side-coaching to explore them more deeply. They’ve got it! They now have a dance toolbox filled with floor pathways, levels, body shapes, spatial relationships, energy qualities, locomotor and axial movements, and the creative problem solving to figure challenges out in interesting ways. It was very rewarding to see them remembering not only a concept we had been talking about during that hour, but concepts we have covered since the beginning of the year. I’m excited to see how we put together their three mini pieces and the snippets of narration in order to show an overview of what they’ve learned.
My faculty advisor, Kathleen Sheffield, came to observe today. It was so good to have here there! She jumped right in and helped Mrs. Findlay and I when we split the class into three groups and worked on group shapes, and she had a lot of good feedback when the class was over. I will greatly appreciate her affirmations and suggestions for continued development.
Favorite Moments:
· Watching the students THINK so hard to remember the words we’ve talked about. Even if they didn’t get the right word right away, their guesses were still related concepts like “symmetry” and “non-communicable.” I gave her a high five for that last one. I can’t even say that word very well.
· Seeing them access all the elements we’ve talked about. I didn’t realize how well they were learning them, but they are all there!
