A Snow Globe, Mushroom, and Ski Slope

Week 5

This week's lesson was all about teamwork.  This lesson plan, inspired by my fellow BYU dance educator Kelli Briggs, was intended to help the students successfully work as a team to complete a goal.

First, we choreographed a dance sequence to the word phrase:

"When we work as a team we can all succeed.  Sometimes we follow, sometimes we lead."

The students enjoyed having a set piece of movement that they choreographed and performed.

A "mushroom"

Then we played a game that required silent communication.  I taught them different tasks to do when I called out a specific word.  The words, such as basket, skyscraper, star, required the dancers to get into groups of a specific number to accomplish the task.  If the dancer was unable to find dancers to be in a group with, then they would be out.  Because of the varying numbers required to complete the task, students would be out each round. This game went on until there was only two students left.  It was fun to see the student's competitive side, and watch them interact with students they would not normally.

A "snowglobe"

Next, I introduced them to the dance/athlete group Pilobolus.  This group creates amazing shapes using only human bodies.  Inspired by Pilobolus, their task was to create shapes using only their bodies.  I assigned them into small groups, and it was their objective to pick a word and create a shape representing it.  Working as a team, the students chose words such as pyramid, ski slope, mushroom, snow globe, and a spider. This task required students to work together as a team, sharing ideas and taking turns being the leader. 

Each group presented their shapes, and the rest of the class tried to guess what they were.   I enjoyed observing the interactions between classmates as they shared ideas. 

An "olympic skier"

Moons, Rings, and Planets

Week 4

This week's lesson was all about the planets.  The students had studied the planets and solar system earlier in the year, so it was a dance review on the things they had previously learned.

I lead exercises for each planet, based on the planet's unique qualities.  We talked about the difference between the inner planets and the gas giants, and discussed each planet's unique elements.

Out of all of the planet exercises, I think the class enjoyed the one for Mars the most.  I shared with them that in the astronomy class I am enrolled in at BYU, we discussed the possibility of alien life. I told them no alien life has been discovered, BUT if it was to be found, it would be on Mars because there is evidence of water there and it's temperature is closest to Earth's. Though there is no alien life (that we know of), I thought it would be fun to explore how aliens could potentially move.


 For Mars' exercise we explored the potential ways aliens could travel from one location to another.  The dancers had to start from one side of the room and travel to the other side in a creative way.  I would tell the students a number of body parts that could touch the ground, and they had to use that number to travel.  Each students came up with a unique way to use their limbs to travel to the other side.  They enjoyed being silly and coming up with creative solutions to the task.

Ocean Waves, White Rapids, and a Water Dance

Week 3

This week, the lesson plan was intended to encourage students to demonstrate an understanding of descriptive words.  The ability to determine the meaning of an adjective, and then demonstrate it through body movement, is a great way for students to solidify an understanding.

I started the lesson by taking the class on a warm up using descriptive words.  As we danced through the open spaces of the gym, I guided them with adjectives such as floppy, crooked, melted, heavy, and light, as well as emotional descriptions such as happy and sad.  They demonstrated the meaning of the words through their body's movement.

Next, we did an exercise that used adjectives to describe different forms of water.  In groups, we danced out white water rapids, falling rain, a calm and deep ocean, soaring ocean waves, and a slow and easy stream.  As a class we had a discussion on how the different adjectives that describe the elements of water influenced different movement from within us.

The final portion of the lesson was spent with the book, "Water Dance," written by Thomas Locker.  The class was divided into small groups of 3 or 4 and given a page of the book.  Each page has a beautifully designed image, and a paragraph with words describing different water scenes as part of the water cycle.  They worked as a team to create a short movement sequence based on their page. Once they were done, they returned the pages to me, and posed in the group opening shape.  The dancers waited along the back wall, until their page number was up next.  When it was their time, the group would move to the center of the room and perform their brilliant woks. Each group worked well together to create movement that matched with the descriptive words on the page very well.  I was proud of their unique dance creations!

Sand Storms, Pharaohs, and a Pyramid

Week 2

When Mrs. Sloan, the teacher of my 6th grade class, told me they were learning about the culture of Ancient Egypt for social studies, I was excited to come up with a lesson that reinforced the ideas they may have learned.  I went to my mentor Jana Shumway, for help and inspiration for a lesson on Ancient Egypt.  She shared with me a lesson that went through the creative steps the Egyptians went through before they reached the structure of their famous pyramids. I appreciated her designs, that helped influence my
own lesson plan ideas.


We danced through various exercises to reach the ultimate pyramid formation. From swirling sand storms around still bodies, to Egyptian shapes along pyramid walls, the class enjoyed dancing out the ideas they had been learning in class. The final task was to create a pyramid shape within small groups.  It was a great challenge for them to work as a team to build sturdy, safe, and unique pyramid shapes with their bodies.

The final section of the lesson was a dance, narrated with information about ancient Egypt.  I took the movement from the exercises we practiced and assigned them to key words in the script.  As I read a series of facts about the progression of pyramids in ancient Egypt, the dancers performed movements that demonstrated my words.  This activity solidified what they had been learning and practicing, also bringing a class unity.  The students were excited to recognize that they had just performed a complete dance together as a class.

Movement Scientists

After visiting my 6th grade classroom and witnessing the enthusiasm of each student, I was anxious to teach them a motivating lesson.  While designing a lesson plan for their first dance class, I was troubled with the task of creating explorations and practices that would maintain their excited and surpass their expectations for dance.  I decided to create a lesson plan that would focus on making them feel comfortable moving their bodies in ways they may never have before.

After arriving at Lehi Elementary, I stopped in the classroom to check in with the teacher and while there I had some fun discussions with a few of the students before school began.  A couple of them were excited to be dancing, rather than running for their gym time, while other students were not as excited to be dancing, begging that we would not do ballet. This discussion before school reaffirmed to me that there would be mixed attitudes about dance, so I hoped the lesson I created would open the door to loving dance.

The students walked into the gym with nervous smiles on their face, but I enjoyed feeling their excited energy.  I began the lesson with the goal of making every student feel comfortable exploring dance, whether they had taken a dance class before or not. I explained to them that we would would be movement scientists, exploring and discovering all the different ways we could move our various body parts.  We then did exercises that experimented with coordinating body parts and exploring different body parts could guide our movement.

After exploring how our body parts could move, I taught a mini history lesson about the dance artist Merce Cunningham and his "Chance Dance."  The task following our discussion was to create a dance inspired by Cunningham's "Chance Dance" technique.  They were assigned to groups of 5 students and given a dice.  Each number on the dice was assigned a body part, so when the group would roll the dice they would create movement inspired by the body part of the assigned number rolled. 

Each group performed their "Chance Dance" and I was impressed with their creative ideas. Some groups were goofy, others expressive and theatrical.  Every dance was different from the next, demonstrating to the students that anything and everything is possible with dance! 

It was great to see the progression of the students over the course of the class.  Some were timid or intimidated by the dance exercises at the beginning of class, but when it came time to perform, they stood center floor with complete confidence.  Their enthusiastic energy after class validated to me dance inspires and brings joy to everyone, which is valuable in a public school setting .

Arts Bridge

I am excited to start my journey through the Arts Bridge program at BYU.  I will be sharing my experiences teaching dance to Mrs. Sloan's 6th grade class at Lehi Elementary school on this blog. Teaching dance to the excited 6th graders will be a great adventure, thanks for following along!