Fifth Visit- Skip counting by 3's and 4's

Another visit down! I'm at the half way mark with my visits to Hidden Hollow. I'm getting to the point where danceable ideas in other subjects are starting to make themselves more visible. It was definitely a challenge at first, and I wouldn't go straight to easy now, but with anything in life, the more you continue with an idea or goal the more successful it becomes. I've done some reflection on my experience as an art scholar through the Arts Bridge program, and i've come to realize that learning and teaching are synonyms. There hasn't been a day, where I've left Ms. Thorstroms classroom with out learning something new about the subject I'm teaching, about movement, or about myself. The ability to keep learning and growing makes this crazy life a beautiful adventure. 

This fifth visit offered a great learning experience to my self as a novice educator. Crazy, loud, unfocused days are going to happen. I attempted to split the students into groups and give each group an equation, and they were responsible for finding a way to give the answer through movement. Most groups decided to make the answer into a group shape. I had one group decide to show their answer with push ups... Thirty-six push ups. This may have not been my most successful moment as a teacher as I watched this group of students struggle to get passed ten push ups. If I were to cross this situation again, I would suggest the students use their skip counting skills as they counted their push ups. Splitting into groups was a fun experiment, but I needed to set a higher expectation of the voice level while they worked together. The class jumped right into their assignment but the classroom started to feel a little crazy with how much was going on in that small space. I left thinking, "How can I utilize all that wonderful young energy in a way to keep students still excited about the learning process but focused and still hard working"? 

Any thoughts or  suggestions? 

Fourth Visit- Skip Counting by 2's

On my fourth visit we focused on basic multiplication skills. I decided to focus on skip counting by 2's. I feel like math is a subject where some students really understand the concepts and other students really struggle making the connection with numbers, so I was excited to see how movement could help bridge this gap between learners. We started with an exercise where we explored skip counting by 2's. I wrote- clap, jump, stomp, snap and skip on the white board, we then correlated these movements with, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10. When we would say two- that meant we would clap two times, when we said fourth, that meant we would jump four times, and so on and so forth. A few students explained to me that skip counting by two, was a very easy thing to do. My plan was to move on to 3's and 4's that day, but then I noticed a few students who were struggling with the two's, and I wanted this to be an activity where they could feel successful exploring math, so I challenged the students who thought skip counting by two was easy to make their movement more dynamic in some way. To challenge the students more, I wrote an equation on the board that could be solved by skip counting by two's. They were asked to dance for the duration of the answer and freeze in a shape when I had counted to the correct number. Example- 2 x 2 = ? The students would then dance for four counts to show me that they knew the answer. I loved watching the students figure out the math problem with the skills they had previously learned. This activity helped them to stay focused while they danced, so they didn't venture off into some sort of la la land. It was a great activity to visually see what students really understood about both math and movement.

Third Visit- Thank- You Bones Part Two

Visit Three!! I love coming to Ms. Thorstroms class, her class is full of caring and energetic students who are bursting with creativity. I did a continuation of the last lesson about the skeletal system. We warmed up by playing a version of Simon Says as I called out different body parts using their latin or greek name. After that warm-up, we reviewed the "Thank-you Bone" dance we created last time. Students learned four new dance energy qualities- explosive, vibratory, swing and collapse. The challenge that I find when teaching a specific subject or concept through dance is what elements I should focus on when teaching. My mentor Pauline Kacher suggested guiding the students more closely using words of that specific subject, instead of new dance vocablary. I found that I was trying to teach science and dance almost as two different subjects, instead of letting each of the subjects support and inform about the other. If I were to teach this lesson again, I would have not added more dance moves to the end of their dance, but rather have the students explore the movement that already knew using the different energy qualities. I feel this would help create deeper meaning to the material they have already learned.

Second Visit- Thank-You Bones!

My second visit went a bit smoother than the first. We moved a few more desks to the side of the classroom which defined a better "dance space". We then reviewed the class rules for when I'm there. Which are 1. Stay in your dance space. This means no touching the walls, desks or their neighbor. 2. Be a focused dancers. When I ask a question, I asked that they show me with their body not with their mouth.  3. Do your best. With dance there are a million right answers for every question, I want the students to feel successful with the movement and material every time I leave the classroom. This visit I taught about the Skeletal system. We focused on three primary functions of the skeletal system which are- structure/frame, movement and protection. When I asked the students to show me what it would look like if they didn't have any bones, they all gave excellent examples of what would happen. The lesson continued on exploring locomotor movement, and isolations of specific body parts that protect essential organs. Each student is so creative, but my main concern with this lesson was their focus and their ability to make connections with the movement and the material they had previously learned in class. It was evident that some students were participating, but they were watching others make choices instead of taking responsibility to really understand why they were asked to move in that specific way. I'm hoping my next lesson, which will be a continuation of this one, can clear up any confusion about the functions of the skeletal system.

First Visit- Orbit and Rotation

Ms. Thorstrom and I were paired up through the Arts Bridge program at Brigham Young University to teach her 3rd grade class at Hidden Hollow Elementary. Our goal is to teach different subjects and concepts through movement. My first visit to her class was on Monday October 13th, and I was asked to teach about the moon, specifically Orbit and Rotation. We did a lot of partner work, which worked with the lesson plan, but since this was my first visit, I feel like it created a little bit of chaos. If I were to do this again, I would wait to do partner work until, at least my third visit when the students had a better understanding of expectations. The lesson took place in the classroom, we moved a few desks to the side so the students had more space to move and explore. Management this first day was a little difficult because I wasn't clear on the boundaries of the room, a few students hid in corners of the classroom, but I now know to touch base on that subject next time I visit. The students are incredibly smart and willing to participate and try, which makes it exciting for me to come and visit. I look forward to my next visit with these sweet students.

Detailed lesson plans are located under the lesson plan tab on the top of the page.