November 6, 2014

For my second experience with Mrs. Rigby's class we talked about opposites in our dance lesson, which is part of the Kindergarten curriculum.

Warm Up

For our warm up we practiced moving both slowly and quickly to the beat of the drum, to get everyone ready to dance. We also moved up high and low as well as sharp and smooth, exploring the opposite ways of moving.

Activity #1

These three activities were taken from or adapted from a book written by Anne Green Gilbert. (For more information look in the attached lesson plan below for details.) For the first activity I had the students pretend that half of the room was Slowland--where they danced slowly and the other half was Fastland, where they could dance quickly. Students experienced crossing over to the opposite lands and dancing in opposite ways. For the second Kindergarten class of the day that we taught, Mrs. Rigby taught this section of class and did a fantastic job! She seemed so natural in explaining it and encouraging the students to move in different ways. Also, for the second class we were able to put a line of tape on the floor to split the room in half for the students, which helped them to understand the different sides.

Activity #2

For this part of the lesson we explored the opposites of moving versus being still. Half of the class made shapes while the other class darted in and out, moving around their still peers.

Activity #3

This was probably my favorite part of the class. When I played the music, students were allowed to dance around however they want (which was pretty amusing when I put the song on Everything Is Awesome) but when I stopped the music I counted to three and they had to find a partner. Then I would count to five and by the time I got to five one of the students had to make a high shape and the other had to make an opposite low shape. Later on in the lesson, I played with this and did things like have them look at their partner's shape and switch places duplicating the shape their partner had just made.

Conclusion

This was a fantastic lesson to explore opposites with the students!! The kids seemed to have a great time and it made learning so much fun! Mrs. Rigby did a great job teaching for her part of the lesson and I hope she will consider teaching opposites through dance with her students in the future!

Arts Bridge- Lesson 2: Opposites