Time: 6-8 weeks
This unit focuses on how choreographers organize their movement ideas into a form. Random movement is meaningless unless it is given form. In this unit, at every grade, students focus on the decisions that choreographers make when sequencing movements to create dances. Students learn about and explore various forms or structures used in dance. At this level, students focus on the simple structure of the dance phrase.
Sample Topic: "Beginning, Middle, and End"
Suggested Resources:
Starter List of Activities
1. Introductory Activities
Introduce the fact that a dance phrase has a beginning position, a middle part, and an end position.
Look at beginnings, middles, and ends in stories, poems, and songs.
Learn a culture's traditional dance. Observe phrases or sections in the dance that have a beginning, middle, and end.
2. Main Activities
Integrate the dance elements into dance-making activities, or explore the elements as introductory lessons.
Have students create a dance phrase that has a clear beginning, middle, and an end position. Create another dance phrase with a clear beginning, middle, and end. Use music with contrasting sections for each phrase or use percussion instruments to accompany the students.
Guide the students to combine their two phrases to create individual dances that also have a clear beginning, middle, and end.
3. Concluding Activities
Have students show their dances half the class at a time, or record the dances on video for later viewing.
Have students describe and discuss the dances students have seen. Have students reflect on any connections made between the dances seen and their own dance experiences.
Sample Topic: "The Fair"
Suggested Resources:
Starter List of Activities
1. Introductory Activities
Ask students to imagine or recall a day at the fair. Encourage them to talk about the sights, sounds, and smells that students associate with the fair.
Display pictures of various fairground attractions. These might include midway rides, animal acts, food vendors, candy stalls, entertainers, or toy and souvenir stands.
Create a display. If there is a local fair, invite an organizer or volunteer to talk to the students about what is involved in putting on a fair.
2. Main Activities
Invite students to list all the different action words that students associate with the fair. Print the words on the board as students make suggestions. Students might suggest roller coasters that climb and swoop down; walking pathways that zigzag; rides that circle, lift, and dive; bungee rides that climb and drop; or swings, that go backwards and forwards.
Discuss the speed or dynamics of some of the rides students have suggested. For example, the roller coaster slowly climbs to the top, swoops quickly to the bottom, then bends around the curve, and glides to a stop. Explore some of these movement possibilities with the students. Use the whole body and body parts to explore the action words associated with different fairground images.
As a whole group, using one part of the fair as inspiration, brainstorm a list of movement-related words. Using the students' word list, select several words to explore as students create two or more dance phrases. Help the students combine the phrases into a fairground dance.
3. Concluding ActivitiesSelect a piece of music that might be played at a circus or fairground. Provide students with the time they need to rework their fairground ideas to fit the rhythm of the music.
Have the students paint pictures and decorate the classroom in a fairground theme. Make popcorn or caramel apples and invite the kindergarten class or another grade 1 class to come and see the display. If the students wish to share their dances with the other students, let your students show their dances to the group. End with a story or poem about the fair.