Reflecting on My Dance Lesson

     Hello to my readers! Thank you for once again joining me on my journey in my dance education as I describe my learning in this process. This week I had the opportunity to teach my classmates using a lesson plan that my group created. Our lesson sought to use dance strategies and curriculum expectations to instruct students on various Habitats and Communities from the grade four science curriculum. Here I will talk about how the lesson went, what I learned from it, and some of the challenges we faced.

     One of the greatest difficulties that my group faced when trying to create a dance lesson was the blurry line between dance and drama. It was a challenge to think of ways that students could represent an idea or demonstrate their knowledge without simply just acting it out. As a group we had to think of ways students would perform the activities using dance as a method of communication or expression rather than just imitate them. Another difficulty we had was trying to envision how the lesson would go as a group. It is easy to visualize ideas that you personally create, but it was not as easy to describe these ideas to my group members. As with any collaborative activity, communication is key to ensuring all members are working together successfully. The final obstacle that was faced was making sure that there was meaningful learning in both subject areas going on. As a group, we wanted to ensure that we were not shallowly including curriculum expectations, but providing a deep learning experience. If I were to teach this lesson to a group of students I would ensure that the students understand dance as a form of communication and connect that to their knowledge of science.

     As I was teaching the lesson with my group and observed my classmates participate in the lesson I thought about how it would work in a classroom with students of differing abilities. For these students I believe there are a number of ways you could differentiate the lesson to meet the needs of each student. For students below grade level due to a learning disability you could have them focus solely on the animal they were given and how they would act. Here the students would just think about where that animal lives, how it interacts with other animals, and how this can be shown with their bodies. For students who have physical disabilities that impair them you could select which animal or plant they get so they have one with limited movement. It is these two factors which I believe makes this lesson so effective because it is one that can be easily altered to make it more challenging or easier with minor changes.