Week Five

This was the last week of the course content and we focused on integrating physical education into dance!


🅷🅸🅴🆁🅰🆁🅲🅷🆈 🅾🅵 🅽🅴🅴🅳🆂

 This theory is well known across a variety of curricular and fields. However, this theory is crucial for teachers to know and use in their classroom. Students must first have their physical needs met before they are able to focus or participate in class.  Once their physical needs are met, students need to feel secure and safe in their environment. In drama this can be shown by a warm and supportive environment where students can share with fear, with guidelines and rules in place to ensure all students can feel safe in sharing their dramas. The next level students need I love and belonging which again can be done through a safe and loving environment and through team building. Lastly, students self esteem and self-actualization needs will need to be met, which are high levels to obtain. This can be met by providing students with positive praise, choice and opportunities to be the best students they can be.

🅰🅽🆇🅸🅴🆃🆈/ 🅸 🅰🅼 🆈🅾🅶🅰

The exceptionality that we focused on this session was anxiety. As a group we discussed what anxiety looked like in the classroom and how we could accomodate our students. We were introduced to Emily Arrows YouTube channel where she creates musical songs and dances for children with a focus on yoga and self regulation. I am familiar with Emily Arrow and have been using her video " I am Yoga" for several years with my students. I have seen first hand how calming this exercise is and how beneficial it can be to a student with anxiety.

🅶🅾 🅽🅾🅾🅳🅻🅴- 🅼🅾🅾🅳 🆆🅰🅻🅺

We were then shown Go Noodle which most of the class was familiar with. We all participated in a dance called the Mood Walk which showed how students can dance when they are expressing different emotions, are feeling anxious or need to self regulate. 

🆃🅸🅼🅴

The curriculum describes time as: tempo (e.g., fast/slow, movement versus freeze), rhythm (e.g., even, uneven). With this dance element, we really focused on the speed of our movements and how we could make them stronger by either moving faster or slower during a dance sequence. By using this dance element, we were asked to create a dance movement with a 4/4 rhythm, with a slow to medium tempo with sudden and uneven dance movements.

🅶🅸🆁🅰🅵🅵🅴🆂 🅲🅰🅽'🆃 🅳🅰🅽🅲🅴

This story was introduced to us to illustrate dancing and bullying. The book introduces us to a variety of animals in the jungle who are great dancers, and one giraffe who isn’t so great. The giraffe tries his best to dance but he doesn’t dance as well as the others. The teacher broke us up into groups of 4 and named us as one of the animals groups, we were then expected to dance like the specific animal. For example, my group was assigned Warthogs and we had to perform the Waltz like a Warthog. Once all of the students had their dances ready, the teacher read the book and had us act out our dance sequences. One of the students was asked to be the giraffe and he was then made fun of because he danced differently than the others and we chanted “ he cannot dance, he cannot dance, he cannot dance at all”. At the end we used some drama strategies and built up the giraffes confidence by sharing all of the positive things we thought about him, we also highlighted that he was an exceptional dancer and no other animal could dance like a giraffe.