Week 13, Dance.

Dance workshop

In today's dance workshop, we used a picture book "Henry and Amy" by Stephen Michael King as a stimulus to dance. Henry is a character who is 'different' and does things in ways he doesn't intend to whereas Amy is quite a perfectionist. Before we did any activities using this picture book, once again we did a routine of warm up activities.

'Chinese Whispers'
I remember playing this game when I was a child, but from my memory, I remember it to be a game where music was played loudly in the background and in a circle, we would whisper a long sentence to the next person once and carry on until the last person would match their guess with the person who first said the sentence. The activity we did in this workshop was an adaptation of my childhood game. In groups of about seven students, we all stood in a straight line, the first person would yep the person in front of them and do a dance move, that person would remember the movement, tap the next person and try to represent the exact same movement until the last person would match what they've learnt with the original movement. This is an activity I will definitely try with my future class. It was fun, quick and easy to organise!

'Henry and Amy'
The activities we did with this picture book reminded me of how closely integrated the creative arts can truly be with other KLAs, especially English. To show understanding of the story and characters, you can represent it through movement! Our class split into four groups and were to represent through dance, either a character or a combination. I was in the group that was to represent Amy. We did short, sharp and straight movements in synchronisation with each other to show that Amy was a perfectionist. I thought that this type of activity will be enjoyed by children in a classroom. It gives them the opportunity to express their understanding through movement.