Miss M's Learning Space

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 ...

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...

This week I had the privilege of attending Brock University's Arts Matter Conference . The day was divided into 4 workshops and concluded with a performance, and I thought I would share some of the ideas with you here. Dance We began the day by exploring dance in the curriculum. I haven't done a lot of work with dance before so this was completely new to me. We talked about how miming isn't the same as dance and were introduced to Action Pak cards . These cards are a teacher resource designed to level the playing field in the realm of dance and make it accessible to all students - especially those who are uncomfortable because they don't 'know' dance.  Drama In drama we explored Story Drama and it was truly powerful. Basically, you read part of a book (we used Henry's Freedom Box ) and do activities at each pause to help you understand and connect with the book. We did a couple of Tableaus depicting various scenes and the most powerful activi...

We were asked in class to create a lesson plan exploring the cross-curricular opportunities in social studies. So, my group decided to create a lesson about residential schools taught through drama and role playing . The general concept of this lesson is to take on a role and then reenact in accordance with your role in response to a certain situation. In each group of four students there are two Martians and two Earthlings. The Martians are representative of euro-Canadians and the Earthlings represent FNMI people (the profiles and situations are at the end of the lesson plan document).