Dance Reflection

Dance, creative movement is really something that I want to incorporate into my classroom/curriculum. I have always felt that dance and music help students open up and feel free to explore. I think that often times it is looked down upon because people associate "dance" with classical ballet or something that would be taught in a dance studio. Yet, they don't realize that creative movement through dance is not the same thing. Creative movement helps students explore physically a concept they are learning about.
For instance, a lesson on Volcanoes, using creative movement to teach such a lesson helps students visually see the formations, helps them be the formations, helps them understand what happened to create it, why it stayed the same or how it evolved. If a student was only told how volcanoes happened they would never really understand or know why such a formation happened.
There is so many ways you can help students with creative movement. It really allows students to put a side their attitudes and appearances. Students have to completely let go and evolve with the flow, they learn self confidence, space and time, social awareness, local motor movements and cooperation. It really is a great way to helps students connect to themselves, their peers and the curriculum being taught.

Drama Reflection

I love the idea of using Drama in the classroom and can really see it being beneficial to the students. Some things I noticed while participating and teaching a drama lesson are that students are forced out of their comfort zone, yet don't feel awkward because it is expected that they be loud, crazy, out of the ordinary because they are playing a "part". Also I think that students can really retain the knowledge they learn better because they can visually see it, they memorize the dialogue, it is an event that becomes a memory to them in turn helping them to retain the lesson in their mind.
I loved in the reading the pantomime approach. I could see the students taking this very seriously, learning their parts and feeling proud to portray the different historical characters. I also love that literacy could be more accurately examined and comprehended. Shakespeare can really be hard to read but acting it out it can be easy comprehended and become another memorable experience for a student.
I think incorporating drama into a core lesson is a very unique and awesome experience for a student. I think it helps with comprehension, literacy, self motivation, social skills besides just teaching the student the core curriculum and it is absolutely beneficial to them.

Reflection #1

I have really enjoyed learning about the different hands on or more creative ways to help students enhance their learning. One thing that I think I would like to really incorporate into my classroom is creative movement in academics. I feel like students often learn better when music is incorporated in their learning but I have watched and read about students learning through creative movement. I recently took a class in creative movement academics and really enjoyed it. I learned to be open minded and expressive. I think that if you had a classroom full of stubborn day dreaming fifth graders I can see how they could come leaps and bounds if they were allowed to move and express themselves. Think what would happen if they were learning while moving and being open minded? It could be magical.
Another activity that I really enjoyed doing in our classroom was the mirror reflection activity. I think it really opened up physical boundaries for us. We no longer could be shy students, we were stretched from our comfort zones and pulled into other boundaries really having to get to know them and express ourselves. I can see this activity working well with students and helping the classroom become more unified, open and more family like.