Cross-Curricular Connections for Creative Dance in Physical

Education April Johnson-Mozzetti Elementary Physical Education and Dance Specialist Dayton Public School Kemp PreK-8 Elementary School

2013 National AAHPERD Convention April 24, 2013Charlotte, North Carolina

Presentation for The National Association for Sport and Physical Education/Council on Physical Education for Children.

Benefits of Cross-Curricular Instruction

• Makes learning holistic for children so they can make connections from the academic classroom to the movement experiences in dance and physical education class.

• A holistic interdisciplinary learning environment accelerates cognitive knowledge for student academic achievement to improve test scores.

• Students develop learning blocks of vocabulary, subject concepts, reading and writing skills in a holistic learning environment.

Benefits of Cross Curricular Teaching

• Integration teaching techniques help to better utilize the instructional process by taking a more in depth study into all subjects by making cross curricular connections to promote meaningful learning experiences for all students.

• Another benefit of interdisciplinary teaching is that students have a chance to work with multiple sources of information, thus ensuring they are receiving a more inclusive perspective than they would from consulting one textbook. (Wood, 1997)

Benefits of Cross-Curricular Teaching

• Integrated instruction also allows for authentic assessment. (Barton & Smith, 2000)

• Integrated instruction promotes the constructivist method of teaching where students take their prior knowledge and expand upon it.

• The most common method of implementing integrated interdisciplinary instruction is the thematic unit, in which a common theme is studied in more than one content area. (Barton & Smith, 2000)

Benefits of Cross-Curricular Teaching

• Implementing interdisciplinary curriculum units helps children acquire targeted concepts and skills of various disciplines more effectively. (Jacobs, 1991)

• Cross curricular links are crucial to learning as learning depends on being able to make connections between prior knowledge and experiences and new information and experiences. (Crown, 2006)

Benefits of Cross-Curricular Teaching

Benefits of Cross-Curricular Teaching

• Cross curricular learning helps develop metacognitive learners and metacognitive learners are able to adapt their learning to new situations. (Crown, 2006)

• Examines the notion of integrated studies as a way of organizing the curriculum in schools. (Kerry, 2011)

• Cross curricular learning helps develop metacognitive learners and metacognitive learners are able to adapt their learning to new situations. (Crown, 2006)

• Examines the notion of integrated studies as a way of organizing the curriculum in schools. (Kerry, 2011)

A to Z Thematic Teaching Themes!

• Animals, Africa, balloons, beach, bugs, color, desert, dinosaurs, elephants, fish, forest, fossils, grass, hip-hop, ice, insects, jump, kites, lights, mammals, machines, newspaper, Olympics, plants, quill, rabbits, sea, solar system, sports, trees, turtles, umbrella, victory, water, woods, x-ray, yarn, and zoo.

Fun at the Farm Thematic Cross-Curricular Activity

Farm Language Arts Cross-Curricular Connection

• Children’s Literature-Barnyard Dance

Farm Language Arts Curricular Connection

• Teacher will read the book the “Barnyard Dance” to students.

• Students will perform the movements from the book.

• Teacher will list the movements from the book on the learning board for vocabulary development.

Farm Word Wall

• Acre, agriculture, apple, barn, bean, bee, bird, breed, broccoli, bucket, bull, calf, carrot, cat, cattle, chicken, corn, crops, cotton, cow, cucumber, dairy, dog, donkey, duck, egg, ewe, farm, farmer, feed, fence, field, flock, foul, food, fruit, geese, goat, goose, grain, grow, harvest, hay, hen, hive,

Farm Word Wall

• honey, horse, insect, irrigation, lamb, land, lettuce, meadow, mice, milk, mouse, mower, mulch, mule, nest, owl, pasture, pepper, pig, plants, plow, poultry, pumpkin, produce, rabbit, radish, rake, ranch, rice, ripe, rooster, scarecrow, seeds, sheep, soil, sow, soy, stable, swine, tomato, tractor, trough, turkey, tools, udder, vegetables, water, weeds, wheat, and windmill.

Farm Cross-Curricular Language Arts

• Students write about their favorite farm animal and how they move.

• They can write about their favorite food that is grown on the farm.

• Students can make comparisons between different types of farm animals and those animals who live in the jungle or at the zoo.

Farm Math Connections

• Classify the farm animals and what purpose they serve on the farm.

• Have the students create farm math problems such as eleven chickens are in the barn. Seven chickens come out to eat. How many chickens are still in the barn?

Farm Math Connections

• Classify the farm animals and what purpose they serve on the farm.

• Have the students create farm math problems such as eleven chickens are in the barn. Seven chickens come out to eat. How many chickens are still in the barn?

Farm Math Connections

• Classify the farm animals and what purpose they serve on the farm.

• Have the students create farm math problems such as eleven chickens are in the barn. Seven chickens come out to eat. How many chickens are still in the barn?

FARM SCIENCE

• Mature turkeys have more than 3,500 feathers.

• There are 47 different breeds of sheep in the U.S.

• Pork is the most widely eaten meat in the world.

• The average person consumes 584 pounds of dairy products a year.

Farm Science Connection

• Elevators in the Statue of Liberty use a soybean-based hydraulic fluid.

• Like snowflakes, no two cows have exactly the same pattern of spots.

• The longest recorded flight of a chicken is 13 seconds.

• Twenty-nine cuts of beef meet government guidelines for lean.

Farm Science Connection

• The average dairy cow produces seven gallons of milk a day, 2,100 pounds of milk a month, and 46,000 glasses of milk a year.

• Turkeys originated in North and Central America, and evidence indicates that they have been around for more than 10 million years.

• Agriculture employs more than 24 million American workers (17% of the total U.S. work force).

• Today's American farmer feeds about 155 people worldwide. In 1960, that number was 25.8.

Information taken from Farmers Feed the US-Fun Farm Facts on

their webpage.

Farm Social Studies Connections

• Location of various farms around the local area and state map.

• Location of various crops that the farmers grow around different parts of the US.

• What kinds of animals are important to farming?

• Where are the different jobs that a farmer can do?

Farm Arts Connections

• Music-Barnyard Dance Song

• Art-Draw pictures of your favorite farm animals and or crops.

• Dance-Country music for scatter square and creative dance compositions.

• Theater-The Movie “Babe” is great!

Farm Creative Movement Study Words

• Bend, clean, climb, crawl, dig, feed, hang, plant, plow, pull, push, ride, rise, shake, stretch, stomp, sway, swing, twist, turn, and wash

• Across, around, backward, curved, diagonal, fast, forward, high, low, medium, over, sideways, slow, straight, under, through, and zigzag.

• Speed of fast, slow, accelerated, and decelerated.

Farm Introductory Activity

• Make a list of the farm words that the students are familiar with.

• Then play “Magic Farmer” with the students using the words and or adding new vocabulary words.

• “I am the magic farmer and I am going to turn you into a chicken chirping and walking in the grass!” Then the students perform that movement.

Farm Main Lesson

• Students are in small groups and they will create a movement sequence of fiddle country dance.

• The students will create a short cooperative group movement sequence.

• Teacher will teach square dance moves, such as arm swing, star, promenade, do-si-do, etc.

• Use instrumental fiddle music.• Students can write their movement compositions

in their journals.

Farm Concluding Activity

• Creative Country Square Dance!• The dancers come to the barnyard dance!• Teacher starts out the dance with all dancers

performing, right arm swing, left arm swing, right hand star, left hand star, do-si-do, heel toe left foot, heel toe right foot, and funny legs.

• Then all groups kneel down while each partner group performs their short country dance sequence.

• The dance will end with all dancers in the center circle moving about and having fun!

Farm Assessment Procedures

• Can the students read and understand the farm vocabulary off of the word wall?

• Can the students perform the axial and locomotor skills of both the farm animals and country dance skills?

• Can the students create safe movement sequences alone, with a partner, and in small and large cooperative groups?

Farm Assessment

• Have the students reflect upon their creative dance learning experience and write about what they have learned in their journals.

• Teacher may use learning board to write about what the class learned through the dance experience.

Beach Cross-Curricular Connections

Beach

Beach Language Arts Cross-Curriculum Connections

• Children’s Literature-Beach Babble by Kimberley Knutson

Beach Word Wall

• Air, ball, beach, boat, breeze, bucket, clam, conch, coral, crab, dive, fish, fishing, Frisbee, heat, hot, kelp, lighthouse, net, palm trees, reef, sand, sandals, sandcastles, sea gulls, seaweed, shells, ship, snorkel, splash, sun, surf, swim, tide, towel, umbrella, waves, and wind.

Beach Language Arts

• Students can write about the beach.

• What are the living creatures of the beach?

• What kind of physical activities can you do at the beach for fun?

• What do you like about it?

Beach Math Cross-Curriculum Connections

• Make a graph chart of the living creatures of the beach and ocean. List the different kinds.

• Create beach word math problems. You are swimming in the ocean for twenty minutes and then you take a break. You get back in the water to swim for another thirty minutes. How many minutes did you swim in the ocean?

• Find out measurements of the water of the beach. Is the ocean deeper than the local lake? Compare numbers.

Beach Science Cross-Curricular Connections

• Beaches are sloping bands of sand, shingle or pebbles along the edge of a sea or lake.

• Some beaches are made entirely of broken coral or shells.

• On a steep beach, the backwash after each wave is strong. It washes material down the beach and so makes the beach gentler sloping.

Beach Science Facts

• On a gently sloping beach, each wave runs in powerfully and falls back gently. Material gets washed up the beach, making it steeper.

• The world’s largest pleasure beach is Virginia Beach, Virginia, USA, over 45 km long.

• From House and Home Interesting Beach Facts Webpage.

Beach Social Studies Cross-Curricular Connections

• Locate the area lakes that have a beach.

• Locate the beaches in the United States.

• Talk about the Great Lakes, Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean, and the Gulf of Mexico and the locations of each.

Beach Arts Cross-Curriculum

• Music-Surfing USA by Beach Boys.

• Art-Sand art and or drawings of the beach.

• Dance-Blue ocean waves, bucket pails, beach balls, and paper fish.

• Theater-Little Mermaid by Disney

Beach Dance Creative Movement Study Words

• Accelerate, balance, bend, climb, crawl, dash, dart, dive, decelerate, drop, fall, fast, float, high, lay, long, low, medium, narrow, rise, short, sink, slow, splash, spiral, spin, straight, stretch, strut, swim, swirl, tip-toe, twisted, walk, whirl, wide, and wiggle.

Beach Introductory Activity

• Listen to the waves of the ocean.

• Write about what you like about the sounds of the ocean waves.

• Do you think the waves are washing up shells to the shore?

• Write about and perform the movement that you would do at the beach.

Beach Cross-Curriculum Main Lesson Activity

• Students will work in small groups and pantomime beach movements.

• Pick some of your favorite animals and things of the beach.

• Composition needs to have a beginning, middle, and ending for the beach dance.

• Create your movement sequences so that others will know what the three things are represented in your dance.

• Students will perform their dances to the song Surfing USA and they can use beach props.

Beach Concluding Dance Part I

• Bring together all the students who just choreographed their small group dances using the dance literacy words.

• Assign each group a home space on the dance floor where they are to be located for the dance.

• You may use a cone to mark the home space to keep students behind it until they are called out to perform in the creative dance.

Beach Concluding Dance Part II

• All the various groups will have a home space for the large group creative dance.

• Teacher will call out each group to perform their creative dance choreography to the music.

• Each group will perform their creative dance movement sequence

Beach Large Group Creative Dance Under The Sea

• Students have a partner and one travels around at a high level while other is a low level then switch. Use fish and ocean props.

• On melody part touch foot out to side left, right, left, right jump forward, jump backward and swim your fish. Repeat.

• Swim your fish under big wave chute. Choose students to be sand builders with buckets, beach volleyball players, and surfers.

Beach Theme Assessment

• Students reflect upon their beach learning experiences and their new knowledge through the journal writing experience.

• They are expected to use both new vocabulary and movement literacy terms in their writing assessments.

• What new things did they learn in the creative dance experience?

• Teacher can use a learning board to ask the entire class what they achieved in class today.

• Teacher will write it out for all students to see.

Sport Thematic Cross-Curricular Activity

Sport Language Arts Cross-Curriculum Connections

Summer Olympic Sport Word Wall

• archery, badminton, baseball, basketball, boxing, canoeing, cycling, diving, equestrian, fencing, gymnastics, handball, hockey, judo, kayaking, marathon, pentathlon, ping pong, rowing, sailing, shooting, soccer, swimming, taekwondo, tennis, track and field, triathlon, volleyball, water polo, weightlifting, and wrestling.

Sports Word Wall

• Agility, arena, amateur, aquatics, athlete, award, badminton, balance, ball, baseball, basketball, bowling, catch, champion, coach, compete, competition, contest, defend, defeat, diving, dribble, equipment, event, fan, fitness, flexibility, football, hockey, goal, golf, gymnasium, gymnastics, jump, judge, kick, league, medal, muscle, opponent, pass, penalty, practice, professional, run, soccer, score, serve, shoot, skating, skill, stadium, striking, sportsmanship, stretching, swimming, teamwork, track, tennis, throw, train, trophy, tumble, victory, volleyball, and whistle.

Sport Language Arts

• Take a look at the local newspaper sports section and list them on a chart.

• What are the sports that are in the local news?

• What are the nouns and verbs in the sports stories?

• Learn new vocabulary words.

Sports Cross Curricular Math Connections

• Take a look at the different scores in the sports of the paper.

• What was the difference in the score to win or lose the game?

• Look at the brackets of the teams to see who is in first place. How many more wins does the second and third place teams need to get to be in the first place position?

Sports Cross-Curricular Science Connections

• What are the major muscles that athletes use when they run?

• What is the difference between aerobic sports and anaerobic sports?

• What does it mean to cross train for a sport?

• What do athletes eat for good diet and nutrition?

Sports Social Studies Fun Facts

• Sports have the biggest television audiences, the most popular being the summer Olympics, World Cup Football, and Formula One racing.

• Gymnasiums were first introduced in 900 BC in Greece where athletes practiced naked to the accompanying music. The Olympic Games were also played in the nude.

• Corubus, a chef, won the first ever Olympic race, in 776 BC.

• The first contemporary Olympic Games took place in Athens, Greece in 1896. There were 311 male contestants but no female competitors.

Sports Social Studies Fun Facts

• The most participated sport on earth is fishing.• The sport with maximum number of spectators is

football.• Boxing was recognized as a legal sport in 1901. • The first contemporary Olympic Games took

place in Athens, Greece in 1896. There were 311 male contestants but no female competitors.

Sports Social Studies Fun Facts

• MLB teams go through about 850,000 balls per season.• About 42,000 tennis balls are used in the Wimbledon

Championship.• The longest tennis match in history took place at

Wimbledon 2010 when American, John Isner, beat Nicolas Mahut of France in a match that lasted 11 hours and 5 minutes. It was played over a period of 3 days for a total of 183 games.

• A cricket ball has between 65 and 70 stitches while every baseball has exactly 108 stitches.

• A football is made up of 32 leather pieces, held together by 642 stitches.

Sports Cross-Curricular Social Studies Connections

• Location of the area sport teams in our community.

• What kinds of sports are available for participation in our community?

• What are the most popular sports in our country and which ones are broadcasted on TV?

• What sports are the most popular in our world?• Can you name at least 10 Winter and Summer

Olympic Sports?

Sports-Curricular Arts Connections

• Music- A song for sports is “Ready for This” by 2 Unlimited.

• Art-What are the colors of the Olympic Rings? Make Olympic Rings and Flags.

• Dance-Use playground balls, yarn balls, bowling pins, hoops, cones, balloons, rackets, soft bats, soccer and basketballs.

• Theater- The Movie “Miracle” is listed as a favorite.

Sport Creative Words

• Arc, balance, bend, bounce, chase, crawl, dart, dash, dive, dodge, dribble, endurance, fall, flee, flip, float, hang, hop, jog, jump, leap, move, play, ran, rest, rise, run, spin, splash, stretch, strong, sway, swim, swing, train, turn, twist, walk, and zip.

• Levels of low, medium, and high.• Shapes of wide, narrow, long, short, and twisted.

Sport Introductory Activity

• Locomotor Sports Athletes to Music• Jump and then become a basketball

athlete.• Leap and then become a gymnastic

statue.• Hop and then become a volleyball player

statue.• Slide and then become a baseball player

statue.

Sports Main Lesson

• Small groups will choose a sport and create dance movement composition reflecting upon that sport.

• Use a variety of balls or playground balls, hoops, cones, ropes, rackets, and or other equipment props for the creative dance.

• Cooperative Creative Dance must have a beginning, middle, and end.

Sports Concluding Activity

• All athletes getting ready for the big game day celebration!

• Each group will perform their dance and will have a coach get them ready!

• All athletes start out the dance in a choreographed movement sequence.

• Then each individual group will showcase their creative composition.

• The large group creative dance will end in total celebration of athletics with balloons and streamers as champions in the sports!

Sports Assessment

• Students reflect upon their sports learning experiences and their new knowledge through the journal writing experience.

• Can the students perform the creative movements, steps, and sequences of the cooperative dance using the sports props?

• Do students cooperate and work together as a group?• Do the students share ideas when choreographing their

dance sequences?• Are the students safe, responsible, and respectful at all

times with the equipment?

Cross-Curricular Teaching References

• Barton, K.C. & Smith, L.A. (September 2000). Themes or motifs? Aiming for coherence through interdisciplinary outlines. The Reading Teacher, 54(1), 54 – 63.

• The Importance of Cross-Curricular Teaching 2006 Crown Copyright

• Jacobs, Heidi Dr. “The Integrative Curriculum” Instructor September, 1991.

Cross-Curricular Teaching References

• Kerry, Trevor. (2011). Cross-Curricular Teaching in the Primary School. Routledge, New York.

• Wood, K. (1997). Interdisciplinary instruction: A practical guide for elementary and middle school teachers. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Merrill

Dayton Public Schoolsand Kemp Elementary

• Thank you to our wonderful students!

• Thank you to our wonderful staff!

• Thank you to the DPS Board of Education for their support!