Multimodal Resource Portfolio : DANCE

Today's blog post will be exploring the benefits of teaching emotion regulation and identification through dance.  Mental health is an essential component of overall  health, therefore it is essential that students are taught how to identify difficult emotions at an early age. The Ontario Health and Physical Education Curriculum focused on:  the development of social-emotional learning skills across the curriculum knowledge and skills related to mental health more opportunities to understand the connections between physical and mental health Moreover, Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) skills are  important to students' mental health and healthy development, therefore,  SEL  is now also a distinct section of the updated curriculum. Important components of SEL skills include the following: Identifying and  managing emotions  Deepening their  sense of self Thinking critically  and creatively Learning about mental health fits naturally in...

Today's blog post will be exploring the integration of science and dance. Nature in itself involves movement, transformation and energy, all of which are components of dance. Encouraging students to mimic the movements within nature, removes the pressure that students may experience when dancing in front of the class. For example, asking students to move their bodies based on their interpretations of thunder, will be more comfortable than asking the students to create a powerful movement with their bodies. Moreover, dance can be easily integrated throughout the curriculum by incorporating it into topics surrounding energy and the various life cycles. Overall, throughout this week's post, I will be reflecting on the learning with took place during week 3 of my dance education course. For our first activity, we focused on the grade 1 expectations for the daily and seasonal changes within nature. To begin, each student was able to choose a stage of the water cycle to focus on, suc...

Mathematics and dance are closely related through terms such as pattern, sequence, shape and parallel. Moreover, through connecting movement to math, students are able to fully immerse their entire body into the learning experience, allowing for deeper and more critical thinking. Throughout this blog post, I will be exploring the various ways math and dance can be integrated into the classroom and the social-emotional and academic benefits of doing so. It is evident that many students lack confidence in mathematics, however through integrating mathematics and dance students are able to connect their mind and body to guide their understanding. Mathematical strands such as shapes, geometry, counting and symmetry, align perfectly with the dance while removing the feelings of pressure that often occur throughout a mathematics lesson. Through this integration, students may better understand mathematical concepts through an increase in motivation to learn and deeper critical and creative thi...

Within this post, I will be reflecting on the activities and elements of dance that were explored in week 1 of the dance education course. By incorporating dance into language arts, students  draw upon a variety of sources – such as literature, and media texts  in order to create dance pieces in a way that communicates their interpretation of personal ideas and feelings. By connecting dance to literature, students are able to fully immerse themselves into the text, where they can express their feelings and emotions of the characters.  Dance Strategy: Bodystorming, guided Improvisation/ Narrative Form Body Storming is a dance strategy, that allows students to use their bodies to explore a variety of different poses. Students envision what they imagine the pose looking like then act it out through movement. Moreover, narrative form is where students tell a story through dance.  For example, within my PJ dance class, students were provided with a passage from Sometim...

The art of dance has a special place within my heart, as I spent my entire youth and young adulthood dancing competitively. For many students, dance allows for an emotional release and freedom to express and move one's body in any way of their choosing. As a future educator, I look forward to integrating dance into my classroom, through making connections across the curriculum and various subjects. As stated within the arts curriculum, dance creates space for students to develop an understanding of the art form, themselves, and others (The Ontario Curriculum, pg.14). Additionally, through dance students will learn how to communicate their feelings, ideas, and understandings in ways beyond oral communication and writing through engaging the entire body. Overall, the focus of this multimodal resource portfolio is to explore the importance of integrating dance across the curriculum and how this supports student engagement and performance within the classroom.  Given the pand...