PE Forum: Facilitator Response

Response to Comments so far!!
by Deryck Ball – Saturday,  14 January 2012, 08:48 PM
Group Cheetah
Thanks for all your comments so far.  It’s very interesting to see the different positions to this “wonderful” unit we are studying right now in PE.
As you all have casually touched on in your responses, June has been a huge catalyst to overcoming our initial fears, aprehensions, false ideas and whatever else may be bothering us when we think about DANCE as a part of the curriculum we eventually will have to teach.  June’s enthusiasm for Dance is very evident, at least to me, and I find that this radiates through the class drawing us into the unit rather than pushing us away.  If she doesn’t like dance, she’s putting on a great facade.
Our inital responses to learning that we may have to teach dance:  “Worried”, “no experience”, “surprised”, “Oh dear heavens”, “pleasantly surprised”.  Why do I draw attention to these initial responses?  I think it’s important to remember that our students will also have initial responses that will pave the way to either a positive or negative experience in dance for them.  As June has demonstrated, there are ways to sneak in there BEFORE an impression is made and change the direction of attitude before teaching it becomes a helpless task.
As Kayla has mentioned, a few of us had prior ideas formed as to what exactly Dance was; tending to conform to the more formal picture of dance.  I was one of these people.  I hear the word DANCE and immediately I think “pink tutu”, NOT FOR ME, and my interest is lost.   Ashley brings up a good point in that dance for children and as a part of an educational curriculum can be about “just moving to the music and getting comfortable with the idea”, something that I think would attend to the male population more appropriately instead of hitting the subject head on as just “DANCE”.  Our previous experiences are great sources of information and provide a lot of insight, however we must be careful not to let what may be negative impressions control our lessons.
Assessing Dance is a whole other ballgame.  There seems to be some consensus so far regarding the appropriateness of assessing something that is so personal and representative of life experience/feelings and more.  Having a rubric as Katelyn notes seems contradictory to such a diverse field open to many different forms of interpretation.  Angel, I can relate to what your feeling when you say you would be more comfortable focusing on Participation, Effort, Improvment and Creativity rather than a more formal approach that suggests you either “get it” or “don’t get it”.  We could see that June sort of celebrated breaking off from the “same as everyone else” approach.  I noticed too that sometimes what she had pointed out and had us model to the class, were the “textbook” models of the action/activity with NO creativity, demonstrating that it’s OK to not be the same or AS CREATIVE as someone else.
I think we have a lot to learn in the the Unit of Creative Dance, but also in how June is implementing the learning associated with it.
-That is all……….for now!!
Re: Teaching and Assessing Creative Dance
by Deryck Ball – Monday,  16 January 2012, 08:24 PM
Group Cheetah

“the author has made dance less of an art, and more of a science”.  Maggie, what a great point.  When I think Creative Dance, I think Intrepretive Dance which both scream “unstructured” to me, and so when thinking about teaching and assessing this I kind of activity I feel lost.  This chapter broke down dance into a familiar format for us which I appreciate.  We will still have to keep in mind that even though it’s being broken down into a science-like format, that dance is still an Artform.

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