Kindergarten is F-U-N!

Hello! My name is Amy Call and I am an arts bridge scholar at Vineyard Elementary this semester. I love teaching dance and am excited to be integrating core curriculum with dance to hopefully further these children's learning experience.

On September 13, I taught a shapes and levels lesson to the AM Kindergarten of Mrs. Roberts class. They were mostly all excited to be dancing and move around. I did not anticipate that so many children would get hurt right off the bat though. As we moved the desks one boy in particular got his arm smashed in between the desks. Everything turned out okay, but what a rough start to the day!

The kids seemed eager to learn and always had something to say, but once the rules and guidelines were set for the class, they did pretty well at dancing with their bodies and not with their mouths.

I originally tried tying in dance shapes (curve, twist, bend, & straight) to something they are already familiar with like geometry shapes (circle, triangle, square, & hexagon), but it really confused them...A LOT! Something they do understand are letters and they have been working on how to write them this year. I decided half way through to start likening the dance shapes to letters and they seemed to grasp that concept much more easily.

I am excited to teach this lesson again to the PM Kindergarten next week and hope they understand the connection between dance shapes and the shape of letters.

Comments

  1. Heather DrewOctober 9, 2017 at 8:13 PM

    Great job at quickly assessing student understanding and adapting your strategy and language to meet your students needs. Reminds me of the book where Pilobolus makes all the letters of the alphabet. I believe it is called "The Human Alphabet." I bet Kindergartners would love to look at that book and it would help them with shape making. Excellent work.

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