Movement and Dance in the Music Class Room
No elementary music class should ever be considered complete without the addition of movement or dance. We know many of our students do not get enough exercise, while we also know that putting movement into the mix when learning a concept helps the brain learn faster and remember more easily. Adding dance or movement has cognitive outcomes for movement as well as creativity, affective outcomes helping students express their feelings, physical outcomes enhancing strength, stamina, and agility, and social outcomes including cooperation, leadership skills, appropriate touch, and body awareness.
So – let’s dance!
I incorporate at least a small bit of movement into each music class. I have an opening agenda that takes about 6-9 minutes.
Listening to music - 2/3 minutes – world music, seasonal, holiday, or concept-centered
Vocal Warm Up – 2/3 minutes – different activities chosen for each week
Body Warm Up – 2/3 minutes – based on elements of dance, or concept-centered
For me, these first 6—9 minutes with my students are well spent. This routine gets my students into the frame of mind to learn music, lets them calm down a little bit and do a safe vocal warm up, and then wakes them up with a little physical movement. Routines feel safe for them. But after those first nine minutes, we might go totally off the musical rails – and they’re okay with it.
Then quite often later in the class period, I add another movement component to the lesson in the form of beat motion, a movement game, a folk dance, or a short session of creative movement solo or with a partner.
I have had only a small amount of training in using movement and dance in the class room, so I have done some research on dance and movement over the last two years. I now know there are elements of dance, just as there are elements of music. So I have begun to base my movement segments in class on the different elements of movement. These elements are:
Concept of Space – place, size, level, direction, pathway, focus
Concept of Time – speed, rhythm
Concept of Force – energy, weight, flow
Concept of Body – parts, shapes, relationships, balance
Concept of Movement – locomotor, nonlocomotor
Concept of Form –theme, ABA, abstract, narrative, suite, broken form
Over the years I have also developed a few tricks that help me out a lot. In my class room I have discovered that it is much better to call almost all of the moving we do “movement” rather than “dance”. My students seem to have no problem making up improvisational movement or movement with a purpose, but do have a whole lot of trouble making up a “dance”. The power of words……. I also am careful to consistently say “Join hands” rather than “Hold hands” to keep any perceived sexual context out of the mix. However I do call choreographed folkdances “dances” because they are. We do those dances for their historical value or value as world dances. I always let students pick their own partners – until they choose one they cannot be successful with. Then they have to dance with me, and that is often the worst consequence EVER.
I have divided movement into several types that work for me in my class room. I rotate them so classes experience all of them over the course of nine weeks.
Movement Types:
Creative movement with a purpose – choreography or improvisational in a framework
Body percussion –Keith Terry or student composed
Folk dance – American regional as well as world
Games with movement – almost always singing games.
Braindance – Anne Green Gilbert
Creative movement with a purpose– I first really understood the importance of creative movement with a purpose at the Orff professional development conference in St. Louis when I took two workshops with Andrea Ostertag from the Orff Institute. When she took us through her process, it just clicked for me. When I took it back to school and tried it on my toughest groups to get moving (4th and 5th grades) they understood immediately and really enjoyed the concepts. Creative Dance for All Ages by Anne Green Gilbert has a huge section of incredible creative movement (dance) activities that I use all the time with all ages.Book of Movement Explorationby John Feierabend is another good one especially for younger students.
Body Percussion – Many of us were introduced to Keith Terry’s body percussion movement called Body Music by Janet Henderson here in Tulsa and by Doug Goodkin at QuartzMountain. It is a series of body percussion movements that can be used in different combinations with many different songs and speech pieces. Since that introduction, we have had other workshop presenters show us variations of the movements developed to fit even more songs. It can even be done in swing for jazz movement. My students begin to learn the movements in second grade and in later years write their own combinations or create their own variations within a framework given to them. West Music now has two Keith Terry DVD’s for purchase to help spread his Body Music. Movement canons using body percussion can turn out beautifully with or without speech or lyrics and melody.
Folk dance – American and world – So many good resources have been written on folk dance that I won’t list them all and use up the space. Talk amongst yourselves and come up with good lists. I think we all have our favorites, and most of them come with high quality accompaniment CDs now with infinite (it seems) repeats for each dance. I personally do not try square dances simply because NEVER, NEVER do I have a class that has multiples of 4 to form the squares. I have my tried and true favorites at each grade level, but I try to add a couple new ones each year.
Games with movement – Every teacher resource you come across has games with movement. Beginning Book of circle games by John Feierabend is wonderful resource for K-2. Spotlight on Music and Share the Musicare filled with games if you have those. Again, talk amongst yourselves to find some good ones. We are each other’s best resource for things like that.
Braindance - developed by Anne Green Gilbert, it is now available with a music CD created by Eric Chappelle. Brain Dance was developed to simulate movements in infants which have proven to be important to learning to read. Many are cross lateral. Anne Green Gilbert has written books on the subject. Eric Chappelle has produced a music CD using the Brain Dance movements. There is a short sequence of less than 5 minutes that I do now and then with all grades K-5. Eric’s CD has narrated and non-narrated sequences as well as some very short PK – 2 movement sequences with songs. The CD is not expensive and well worth the money as a movement resource.