Exploring the Creative Process Through Dance
Using Movement in the Classroom
Author: John Morris
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Two creative dance ways of warming up your students – the circle warmup and the walking warmup. Both work well with all age groups. Each can serve different purposes.
Along with warming up students in ways that are natural for their own bodies, the warmups provide opportunities to introduce teaching concepts as well as opportunities for formative assessment of where the students are starting from and how they are progressing with the concepts.
The circle warmup is effective for individual work, and encourages students in controlled ways to see and share movement, as well as interact.
The circle warmup can start with a movement/name game, as in the video, or it can start with simple breathing, reaching, and gentle full body "shaking out" to get students focused.
The circle warmup can incorporate any of the dance elements, including shapes, body parts, levels, and energy. The teacher can initiate at times, and different students can initiate at other times.
Copying shapes or simple movements, and passing simple shapes and movements are two formats that can be varied in fun and exploratory ways from class to class.
The walking warmup is also effective for individual work, especially in exploring personal and community space, but is additionally suited for exploring ways of traveling through space and using locomotor movement.
The walking warmup can incorporate any of the dance elements, including tempo, energy, shapes and levels. This is an opportunity for students to experience how they are feeling in the moment (their own natural walking pace, for today), and working with that feeling.
Along with warming up students in ways that are natural for their own bodies, the warmups provide opportunities to introduce teaching concepts as well as opportunities for formative assessment of where the students are starting from and how they are progressing with the concepts.
The circle warmup is effective for individual work, and encourages students in controlled ways to see and share movement, as well as interact.
The circle warmup can start with a movement/name game, as in the video, or it can start with simple breathing, reaching, and gentle full body "shaking out" to get students focused.
The circle warmup can incorporate any of the dance elements, including shapes, body parts, levels, and energy. The teacher can initiate at times, and different students can initiate at other times.
Copying shapes or simple movements, and passing simple shapes and movements are two formats that can be varied in fun and exploratory ways from class to class.
The walking warmup is also effective for individual work, especially in exploring personal and community space, but is additionally suited for exploring ways of traveling through space and using locomotor movement.
The walking warmup can incorporate any of the dance elements, including tempo, energy, shapes and levels. This is an opportunity for students to experience how they are feeling in the moment (their own natural walking pace, for today), and working with that feeling.