Colored Floor Tape
5-8 years
The size of the space may depend upon the number of children, although the space should be large enough to enable them to feel the sensations of moving through space.
A large role of colored plastic floor tape (which will be used to create part of a floor pattern before the students arrive, and a completed floor pattern during the class), various sheets of 8 1/2" x 11" paper with the words and stick figures of locomotor and non-locomotor movements that have been experienced in previous lessons, (run, jump, skip, sleep, grow, walk, hop, fly, slide, and gallup), and taped music or drum accompaniment.
The students will learn that dancers create pathways as they move through space.
Students will perceive a visual pattern as they move through space, by following the lines of masking tape on the floor, with locomotor movements of their choice.
Students will explore a new pattern that they have created, by following it with various locomotor movements.
Students will create a dance movement pattern by choosing locomotor movements to do at specific points of the pathway.
Students will perform their dance movement pattern to music, several times with the masking tape and symbols, and a few times without the visual aids.
1. Review of Personal and General space, which has already been introduced in a previous lesson. The students are each given a small piece of tape. This is our magic tape that we will use to create our personal space bubbles today. After the students have drawn the bubbles all around them with their piece of tape, ask them to keep the tape on their shoulder so that they will know where to find it if they need to make another personal space bubble. The teacher should also remind the students that if anyone bumps into another student, the activity will be stopped and the space bubbles will be remade.
2. The teachers asks the students to line up on the straight line of the masking tape, and walk through the curved and pointy parts of the tape. Questions: What can you do when you get to the end? Can you go backwards? Sideways? Forward? What kinds of movement can you do along the tape?
3. Review the pictures of stick figures with words, of the movements that have been explored in the previous classes (e.i. run, jump, skip, hop, leap, walk, roll, slide, spin, sleep, and gallup). Question: Can you tell me what this movement is?
4. Review the percussive sounds that have been established in the previous classes. Question: Can you show me what this movement is?
1. Give each students a long piece of tape which they can add to the line to extend it into a large shape. Remind them that they can make their piece of tape curved, pointy or straight, and that it can go in any direction. Make sure that the extensions somehow connect with the beginning of the tape, even if the teacher has to add the final piece. (A large group of students may have to be split into smaller groups at this time).
2. The teacher instructs the students to explore the new pattern, by doing various locomotor movements of their choice. Questions: Can you go backwards? Sideways? Forwards? Can you show me the kinds of movements you would like to do along the tape? Can anyone show me the inside of the pathway? The outside?
3. The teacher invites each student to choose one picture/word of one movement they would like to do, and asks them to find a spot on the tape to sit with their picture. (This will work for a small group of children, but if there are more then six, the teacher may need to limit the number of movements chosen, so that the students will be able to remember them. Those children who do not get to chose a movement should be given another responsibility such as choosing the direction, or being the leader. It may also work to have the children pair up into twos before choosing a movement. For the groups of twos it will be important that they understand the inside and outside of the pathway so that one partner can be inside and the other outside, yet still maintain their personal space bubbles. Also, if a student has chosen a non-locomotor movement such as sleep, you may want to let them find their own solution to the problem of making it move, and be willing to let them chose a locomotor movement to go with the non-locomotor movement they have chosen).
4. When all the students are ready, the teacher asks them to place their pictures on the floor, so that they can still see them, and do their movement along the pathway until they come to another picture. Then they will do that movement and so on......
1. Once the group has repeated the pattern several times to the percussive sound, the teacher can add the taped music.
2. The teacher splits the group into two and have each group watch the others perform the pattern to the music.
3. The teacher asks all of the students to go over it one more time. Questions: Can you remember it with out the tape? Without the pictures? The teacher gives the students time to review the sequence without the visual aids.
4. The teacher splits the group in half again and asks each group to watch the others perform the sequence with out the visual aids.
Angela McDonnell
Teachers College
Columbia University
October 1992