Thursday, April 28, 2016

Poetry-Inspired Chair Duets

Students in 4A had a chance to combine their ideas about poetry with a new dance framework called "Chair Duets."  Students worked in pairs to create a combination that was inspired by this poem about slavery.


Students based their dances on the following structure:
1. my own pose
2. connect to partner
3. move with partner


Here are just a few of their initial creations. 

Enjoy!

Saturday, April 23, 2016

It's Better When I'm Dancing

Dancing brings us together! For the past two months students have been learning a flash mob dance. Students choreographed dance movements in small groups to the song "Better When I'm Dancing" by Meghan Trainor. They also learned group choreography. All students in Grades One through Four along with the Gr. 5-6 Dance Activity performed together at the SPA Luncheon. Thanks to Mr. Lewis for capturing this special moment! Enjoy the video.  While you can't see Gr. 4 from this perspective, we know that you were dancing along.  Thanks for dancing for all the people at your side of the gym.


Dancing to Express Our Rights

Art has been a place for people to express their opinions about the world.  Choreographer Alvin Ailey expressed his experiences of injustice for African-Americans through a piece he created called "Revelations."  


The Grade Four students are beginning to explore how injustice, rules, rights, and responsibilities can be expressed through dance.  They will learn a portion of Ailey's choreography "Revelations."  Using various dance elements they will express their ideas in their own choreography.

Here's the piece that will inspire our choreography, Alvin Ailey's "Revelations."  If students were to dance about injustice today, what would their dance be about?  What might it look like?


Revelations was created over fifty years ago. Here's some of the inspiration behind the piece.  


Thursday, April 7, 2016

Historical Fiction Writing

4th Graders are currently working hard in their historical fiction writing unit. In this lesson we used one of our historical fiction mentor texts to help us in our own writing by thinking about the way fiction stories usually go.

After reading "Baseball Saved Us, " by Ken Mochizuki we mapped out the story into a 'story mountain,' making sure to identify the lead, sequential events, heart of the story, and the closing.   Writers used their knowledge of story mountains from our realistic fiction unit in the Fall.










After creating a story mountain for our mentor text, writers applied this planning strategy to the their own historical fiction writing.