National Dance Week Foundation
Modern Dance Project
As part of a celebration of National Dance week, class members engage in a series of exercises that introduce them to the movements of modern dance.
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Note Names and Note Values - An Interactive Smart Board Lesson
Using the Note Names and Values SMART notebook file, review the whole, half, quarter and eighth note with students. Students sing "Apple Tree Song." They add body percussion, and then instruments. Students use the SMART apple tree, they...
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High and Low Tones
Learners perform movements to trigger high and low tones in music produced by percussionists.
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Using Harmonic Vision’s Music Ace Software to Reinforce Basic Music Skills
If you have access to Harmonic Vision’s Music Ace Software, then this lesson could work for you. Kindergarteners use the video music software to place, identify, and read musical notes. They listen in and identify both high and low...
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Dali & Desnos: Surrealism in Poetry and Art
Young scholars research the surrealism movement and its primary artists. Language is also analyzed, and students will create their own original poem utilizing surrealistic techniques.
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Poetry/Music: Let It Snow!
Young scholars create poems and sound compositions using instruments, sounds, and pictograph notation. After listening Debussy's Children's corner suite, they brainstorm a list of snow vocabulary words. Students write poems and in groups...
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Picturing America: Images and Words of Hope from Romare Bearden and Langston Hughes
A carefully crafted three-day instructional activity integrates poetry and visual art. By analyzing and comparing Langston Hughes' poem "Mother and Son" and Romare Bearden's collage "The Dove," readers explore the theme of hope. The...
US Department of Health and Human Services
Learning Something New: How Does It Feel?
Use song and dance to help your youngsters identify their feelings and embrace learning. Starting with a brainstorming activity, class members talk about learning new things and how this made them feel. After listing to the song, and...
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Chance Art: Pollock, Cage and Cunningham
Learners clearly identify commonalities and differences between dance and other disciplines with regard to fundamental concepts such as materials, elements, and ways of communicating meaning.
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The blues highway: An integration of music with geography
Learners analyze the movement of the blues from rural Mississippi to urban Chicago and how place and the environment affected the development of the blues. They define the blues, where it originated and how and why it moved to Chicago....
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Character Traits in Fables
Combining art, music, dance, and reading comprehension, this lesson is geared to reach all ability levels. After reading a variety of fables and discussing story elements and character traits, class members select a moral to use as the...
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Lesson: An Exploration of Places and Spaces Part I
The concept behind this lesson is fantastic. Learners explore how different locations and situations affect them as individuals, focusing heavily on the impact of the urban environment. They question how location can make them change...
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Native American Music and Dance Activity
Students demonstrate keeping steady beat through practice exercises and stepping to the beat using instruments such as conga drums, tambourines and rhythm sticks.
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Self and General Space in Dance
Students explore the different themes and strategies of dancing by performing in class. In this physical education lesson, students practice moving specific joints and muscles as they train to perform a dance. Students...
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Patterns in Dance and Math
Students analyze how repeated body movements and shapes can represent and extend patterns. In this pattern analysis lesson, students discuss patterns in dance, math, and everyday living. Students demonstrate a dance using a sequence of...
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Dance and Math
Second graders examine human body movements by measuring the choreography of a dance. In this physical education lesson, 2nd graders participate in a creative dance which is based on specific movements of each limb, which students...
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Clerihew Dances III, 4 and 5
Third graders relate dance movements to chants. They tap out the rhythm of poetry on different body parts.
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Arts Impact and Math
Third graders incorporate math into dancing. In this algebra lesson, 3rd graders identify different shapes and patterns using dance movements. They relate the different creations to polygons as they incorporate the use of stretchy bands...
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Connecting Literature, Writing and Music
Students assess the impact of music to portray emotions and tell stories. Examples are taken from the life of Rosa Parks and a piece of band music called "A Movement for Rosa". Evaluation is accomplished through in-class participation...
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Music-Follow the Drinking Gourd
Fourth graders study the song "Follow the Drinking Gourd." For this dance lesson, 4th graders listen to the book by the same name, listen to the music, and in small groups create a short dance illustrating a stanza from the song.
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Line and Pattern
Students create a silhouette of a simple figure and repeat it to create a pattern drawing with rhythm.
Mississippi Whole School Initiative
Dream Big...With Your Eyes Wide Open
For many people, Barack Obama's presidency was the next step in Martin Luther King, Jr's dream of America's future. Explore the dreams of Americans past and present, as well as the young Americans in your class, with a set of activities...
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Grand Canyon Suite
Take a trip to the Grand Canyon! Lesson one explores how Ferde Grofe painted a musical landscape of America when he wrote the Grand Canyon Suite. Learners then examine art that shows the Grand Canyon in lesson two. Finally, lesson three...
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Telling Stories Through Dance
Examine the movement of characters in the story, Caps for Sale. Using the text, pupils invent gestures and movements for some of the actions and major events. They practice retelling a story by using the movements they developed. They...