Miss M's Learning Space

The creative process, as defined by the Ontario Curriculum , is a flexible approach to learning and exploring the arts. It applies to any creative endeavour such as music, visual arts, dance, media arts, drama, or language arts. There are 8 steps/stages that are continually being revised through feedback. The diagram below outlines the stages, and the dotted arrow indicates the cyclical nature of the arts (i.e. never ending, one project informs the next). The Ontario Curriculum Grades 1-8: The Arts p. 20 (2009).  In practice, this is a wonderful technique to encourage the incorporation of feedback and familiarize students to the idea that feedback is a good thing and shouldn't be seen as punishment. Instead, by having ongoing consultation with the teacher and peers and incorporating self-assessment, the student will produce more thoughtful work that represents more depth and understanding. For example, in dance if students are working at a higher level of Bloom's Taxono

Throughout this class, we explored several pedagogical theories and how they apply to dance, or how they can be expressed and applied in drama and dance. Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences Gardner's theory was developed in 1983 and proposes that intelligence is not just one ability, but rather a combination of 'modalities.' He also apposes distinguishing someone as having only one modality (for example, no one is only a musical learner), but rather that we possess all modalities and should explore learning through each to gain greater understanding.  The diagram below from GrandSlam demonstrates the 8 modalities of Gardner's theory.  GrandSlam (2015). Multiple Intelligence Theory: Is it Real? In practice, drama and dance provide a wonderful mode of learning curriculum content from other areas. For example, dance can be used to explore word development through the mode of musical, kinaesthetic, and interpersonal intelligences. Or, similarly,

Drama is an art that requires students to be comfortable with each other, and there's no better way to get students comfortable than warm ups! This post is to summarize several of the best warm ups I've found so far. Corridor of Voices This activity involves having students stand in a row across from each other (like in the image below).  O'Connor-Tennant, Ross. (2017) The student at the front then walks down the aisle while the students say phrases or words related to the source material. This may be a challenging activity for students who are easily overwhelmed and considerations should be made for them (such as having them only say the words/phrases or don't include this activity if there's no way of incorporating all the students). This activity allows students to understand how the character in source material may be feeling which makes it an effective activity if students can't empathize with a character. It's also simple; there aren&

This post is based on a presentation that I completed with a group of other teacher candidates. We were tasked with teaching a concept from another subject area through dance. We chose to explore the dance Tinikling which is the national dance of the Philippines as a means to explore the development of the country as part of the grade 8 geography curriculum (as detailed below). This dance originated during the Spanish colonial times in the Philippines. The local population of people were enslaved and subjected to punishment consisting of getting hit with thorny bamboo sticks on their feet. The Filipino people became very good a dodging the bamboo and the Tiniking dance was born. Choreographic Form of Dance & Dance Elements We chose to model the choreographic form of Call and Response . In this type of dance one soloist or group performs, followed by a second soloist or group whose performance responds to the first. This can also be referred to as a lead-and-follow activity, o

As part of our class for teaching dance, we explored the opportunity for a cross-curricular connection between language and dance. The activity we did, specifically, was targeted towards grade 6 students and there is a video of our interpretation of this activity below. Language  This activity involves creating a dance in response to a poem. The poem we used was Christine Jackson's Departures , and it was read aloud while students perform the dance with soft music that adds to the mood of the poem. This connects to the curriculum expectation reading 1.6: extend understanding of text /ideas by connecting, comparing and contrasting the ideas in them to their own knowledge, experience, and insights , to familiar texts and to the world around them. It requires students to interpret the poem's themes and represent them in a different way.  Dance This activity connects to the dance curriculum expectation A1.2 use dance as a language to interpret and depict central themes

As part of our drama course this semester our group connected 5 drama strategies with the grade 8 science strand on cells (understanding life systems). Our guiding theories were The Learner's Theory (Dwyer, 1996) and The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (Dr. Howard Gardner, 1983). Guiding Theories The Learner’s Theory (Dwyer, 1996) states that 10% of what children hear they will retain, but 90% of what the teach to themselves and each other they will retain. This is important to keep in mind when planning lessons and activities for students to do. When students say, discuss or “do” an activity they are 70% more likely to understand and retain this information. This is why we have chosen 5 various drama strategies to assist in teaching our science concepts that require students to be active participants. This will ensure students are not only engaged in the lesson, but also grasping the concepts being presented as Dwyer’s theory ensures. The Theory of Multiple Intelligences wa

As part of the Affiliate Federation Day (sponsored by OECTA) I had the privilege of attending the ' ICanyet Student Driven Student Portfolios ' workshop. The idea behind the workshop was to learn about the power of having a growth mindset in all subject areas and creating a student portfolio in order to monitor progress. The workshop was packed full of information and resources from Dan Montanaro (@mrm1mr), so I've selected my top 3 take-aways to share here. Student Driven Portfolios in Student-Led Conferences I've heard about student-led conferences before, but only briefly and not in great detail. The idea is that students take ownership of their work and behaviours in order to share with their parents in place of traditional parent-teacher interviews. Dan's method was having students save all of their work through the term in a portfolio and then curate the key pieces they think shows their growth as a student to share in a presentation to their parents.