Folk Dancing in the Music Room

Image from Unsplash (Yan Berthemy)

 For my ICDP this year I would like to focus on integrating more folk dancing into the music room!  

4th quarter last year (20-21), I started using a few folk dances as a way to get students' bodies moving either at the beginning of class to wake us up or at the end as a reward for hard work (because they are fun!!- at least most students think so).  The first time I did this in class with the 3/4 students, I got tons of eye rolls and groans that I was going to make them dance... by the second class period they were begging to have enough time to "Sasha" and wanting to know when we were going to learn a new one!  I quick checked with Shawna and Lisa about what dances they knew that I could learn/teach quickly and I made a list of 4/5 that we did throughout the remainder of the school year.  

I would like to spend more time researching and learning new dances that I can integrate this year with the students because movement is so important to our learning and (I am working on this next part) but research shows that dance teaches so many different parts of music as well (beat reinforcement, form, phrasing) as well as many other areas outside of music (posture, cooperation, SEL), not to mention it can be very fun!  I know though that I have to be purposeful in how I teach the dances and what I emphasize if I want to be able to actually teach those areas so I want to spend time a) finding more dances and b) planning how I will incorporate the teaching of form, beat, SEL, cooperation, etc.