Day #6 - Fall Themed

Today was my sixth day teaching in the classroom. My plan for this lesson was based on exploration and discovery through movement, so we focused upon body movements and ways to travel through the space.

But to begin the lesson, we sat down on the rug so I could introduce myself and our dancing activities for the day.

We went over our dancing rules, which are:

Dancing Rules:

1. Follow Instructions.

2. Respect Classmates, Teacher, and Equipment.

3. Try Your Best.

Afterwards, we dove right into our lesson, where we had a warm-up activity. This activity is a fun one called "What Did I Do Today."

I had the students find their own space, and when I turned not he music they were free to explore their morning, using movement to show, not tell what they had done this morning. Like waking up, brushing teeth, and eating breakfast. The student had 30 seconds to act out what they had done so far in the day and they began by waking up and traveled through the entire morning up to the current moment. The students seemed to really enjoy this warm-up activity.

We then moved on to our lesson focus, which was centered around the seasons of the year. We first reviewed each season, what it looked like, felt like, and what activities we could do during that season. For example, we talked about summer, and how we could swim in the summer, hike, and go to the beach. We then, using movement, began to explore these different seasons and these seasonal activities.

We worked on creating a movement sequence to represent these different seasons and their corresponding senses, taking turns to each think of characteristic of each season and explore that characteristic through movement and dance.

We split up into two groups afterwards and played a version of "Red Light, Green Light" incorporating seasons into the game. The seemed to be very engaged in the lesson and throughly enjoyed the game. So far, I feel that these kindergarteners are doing great and improving with each lesson. They are always engaged and they each are excited to learn, move, and explore with me.

We finished our dancing day back on the rug for a class discussion. I started the discussion by asking questions to understand what they had liked or disliked about the lesson, as well as what they learned. We discussed seasons and about what I would be doing when i came back and what we would learn during our next lesson. It is in the next several lessons that i will be starting my final project for this program, working with my students and my homeroom teacher to plan, start, and execute my final project.

All in all it was a good day where we were able to explore different ways of moving our bodies and how we can incorporate those into movement sequences and apply those sequences to everyday lessons and meanings.