Week 5: Dance and Character Education & Well-being

Inside Out - Meet the Emotions

Reflection: This is an effective activity because it allows students to explore emotional awareness and connect emotion to verbs and movement. 

Warm-up: Karate Contest

Warm up: Karate Contest includes small groups labelled North, South, East and West. Each group come sup with 3 karate moves and sounds to go along with them. North vs South take a step forward, bow, perform their moves in unison at the same time as the other group, and bow to end.

Activity:

Expectations: 
Dance gr. 7/8 A1.2 use dance as a language to communicate messages about themes of social justice and/or environmental health

Health C2.3 apply personal skills and interpersonal skills (e.g., self-awareness and self-management skills, including anger management; communication skills, including listening skills and assertiveness skills) to promote positive interaction and avoid or manage conflict in social situations (e.g., classroom groups, groups of friends, sports teams, school clubs)

Flocking- A type of movement improvisation in which students mirror or shadow each other's movement in groups. Often uses a diamond formation. Students follow the movements of a leader and share leadership throughout the group.

Theme and Variation- choreographic form that starts with an original movement idea that is repeated with various modifications (e.g., performed faster or slower, with lighter or stronger movements, in a new place) while still maintaining its structure and sequence, resulting in an A-A1-A2-A3 pattern. The theme may be repeated between the variations.

Begin by watching an anti-bullying video and discuss the characteristics of a bully and a victim. Use Body storming to express any ways that you can convey those ideas or feelings through movement.

Divide the class in half, half the class will be groups that play victims and the other half bullies. Each group chooses 3 or 4 actions they would like to express to create a movement sequence.

Use the form of theme and variation by repeating a movement again and again in different ways (e.g., performed faster or slower, with lighter or stronger movements, in a new place).

Combine theme and variation with flocking. Place the students in a diamond shape on the space. One person is at the head of the diamond and leads the other 3. The other 3 follow the movement sequence of the leader. When that sequence is done, the diamond turns ¼ turn so that a new leader is followed. Repeat so that everyone gets a chance at being the leader. 

One victim and one bully group perform at the same time beside each other, this creates a powerful performance. Teacher can rearrange group members so that diamonds are intertwined. 

Reflection:

This lesson can be really impactful for students. Lessons like this help students to explore social justice issues (in this case, bullying).We explore how to identify the traits of a bully and victim, and how to represent that through movement. This lesson can develop a rich discussion behind how we see the victims, what we can do about bullying. We can also use the video (below) of the dancer's performing to prompt a discussion on the feelings that they might be trying to convey through dance. 

Week 5: Drama and Character Education & Well-being

Story Suspension/Forum Theatre

In this class we explored drama integrated with character education and well-being. Some effective strategies for this are story suspension and forum theatre. In story suspension, which we have used previously in classes, the teacher reads a story aloud and suspends the story at suspenseful parts in order for students to interpret meaning through drama. The teacher can choose a social justice issues, in this example we focused on bullying, to create a forum theatre, a strategy which uses drama as an open forum for teaching people how to change their world.

These strategies were impactful to me because it allows for students to role play portrayals of the social justice topic. The teacher asks students to recreate the scene, and then recreate it differently as a means to promote justice, by selecting a character to change. In this example, we changed the bystander to stand up for the character that was being bullied. Another strategy that can be used in Alter-ego, where the character has to make a choice to act based on what both good and bad sides are telling him (similar to angel and devil on your shoulder).


We also explored Finding Common Ground document, which says that a quality education is more than academics, it is the whole person. Learning cultures and communities must be caring, safe and inclusive.

Character development is about self-awareness and doing what is right because it is the right thing to do.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Integrating drama with character development allows students to meet the needs outlined in Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Character development ensures safety and security in a positive school climate, friendships, heightened self esteem and respect of others, and also acceptance for who they are. 

Lastly we discussed how to include students with selective mutism. Selective mutism stems from an anxiety disorder, students are stiff, withdrawn, turned away, rarely smile, and show an inability to speak or communicate. To include students with selective mutism you would want to allow them to reflect on the drama in other ways, such as writing a script for a forum theatre, or written reflections on the story. They could also use drawings to depict scenes of the story or to describe how the scene could change.