Reflection 6 Dance Week 1

Bringing creative dance into teaching children can be very useful to create a social interaction opportunity that may be entirely unique to them. Creative dance can also allow children to become more familiar with their body and even more confident in the way they control it. It is true that victims are chosen by their tentative, irregular, body language; so, bringing in creative dance will hopefully help children be more confident and comfortable with their body movements. Creative dance can also be an evaluative tool for the teacher to recognize struggles with coordination and understand ways to help with developing it.

It became more clear to me as I worked on dance techniques in class today that I wanted to follow directions so as not to be embarrassed in front of my peers. I found that I wanted to have a dance move no one else thought of, though it was uncomfortable. Children may start to realize that they are not the only ones that are uncomfortable or struggling, but as they look around, they may see everyone else having similar difficulties. This can be a good eye opener for children to realize that everyone experiences things differently, and everyone adapts to things in different ways, all struggling in some ways and succeeding in other ways.

For the preparation for field, I will be including some dance activities, and I will feel a little more passionate about its benefits and more comfortable with the exercises. During the class presentation, I want to try out dance activities that have a lot of creative options. I will make sure to include clear directions so that there is room for creativity within the clear understanding of the activity.

To incorporate this knowledge into my practice as a teacher, I was thinking of writing down a few lesson ideas next week during the group activities and then putting them in my activities file of ways to be a cool teacher. I could also just write them in my creative arts sketch book. I could also hi-light them in my book, but books tend to become a cumbersome looking task instead of a useful tool for me sometimes. I may need to take my favorite activities from group presentations and write a few key reasons why dance is important from the book and just start with that for my first useful compilation of incorporating dance into my classroom. I also love props, so it would be helpful for me to make props for the drama activities that would also work for dance, like pom-poms, streamers, fabric, drums, flags, etc.