School Workshops

Ashley Hill:
This week I was at Ashley Hill, where again, I taught all year groups. We had plenty of topics, we even worked on Harry Potter – the session was great and I saw some really nice dance moves. The first day, I worked with lots of different classes, including Reception, Year 3 and Year 1. The children worked so nicely together and were really keen, asking lots of questions. We started by warming up and then played a couple of games exploring levels and paces followed by the chance to learn new moves and develop them into their own routines.
I found on the first day, compared to the rest of the week, there was a slight lack of focus, which is sometimes understandable as the children may have never danced before and it is not often they get guests or dance teachers in school. A lot of them were really excited so the noise level was loud for some classes, however, lots of great work was produced and we received some great feedback and conversation regarding each of their peers’ work.
For the rest of the week, all of the children were really lovely and some of them really wanted to do well. A lot of the children went to dance classes already, some of which I teach, and so were incorporating things they had already been taught with themes and new moves from our sessions. I thought that this was really positive and it was nice to see everyone being so creative. Some of the staff also joined in at times, which was promising as they took an interest into developing and adapting sessions so they can continue on with dance in their school.
 
 
Primary School Workshops – Onchan (Year 2): Today I was working with children from year 2 at Onchan Primary School. These children had been doing basic dance already in their PE classes and wanted a different workshops to give them different experiences.
We focused our sessions all around autumn and things that make the outside change in the autumn. There were two fairly large classes, one of which I worked with in the morning and then one of which I worked with all afternoon. I had my same lesson structure, but obviously added a few things such as a storytelling section, in order to fill out the session. All of the children were really engaged and very excited to be doing something different. We worked on four specific movements for a portion of the session and then developed those into some very autumnal dance routines. The children were asked to create their own routines including those four moves, but also telling a story through their movement. So they could have told a story of a cold autumn walk or the leaves turning brown and falling off of the trees. I saw some really grown up team work and I was very impressed with the level of focus that all children had and I saw some really great work.
The children were also able to explain exactly what was going on in their routines and knew exactly when to do things, so they were very well rehearsed in the small amount of time I gave them. I also noticed that the children all seemed really positive and wouldn’t shy away from answering any questions I asked them. Lots of them were interested in dance and wanted to learn specific moves and things like that. I had a really positive experience with the year 2 classes and hopefully during their PE classes they can use some of the skills I worked on with them.