Dance Reflection

I was really impressed with the situations that the text gave, about dance influencing people. I agree that Dance is healthy and that children need to move around more during school, instead of sitting at a desk all day. I also agree that dancing can bring joy, I do feel that it can make some people feel very uncomfortable. I personally enjoy dancing but I hated making the poses in our class, I felt really stupid making them. I didn't mind doing the folk dance as a class, but I didn't like doing the geometry figures. I really can't see my self using dance very much in my classroom. I preferred drama.  Saying this I can see why dance specialist would focus on creative dance, it give the children a chance to express and solve problems in a different way.

Drama Reflection

      I liked the lessons we did in class incorporating drama into our lesson plans. I didn't realize how broad Drama is, I've learned that you don't have to put a play together to incorporate drama into your classroom. I also learned that drama can make everyday lessons exciting and fun for students. I love the game one of our groups played where they had the name on their backs and had to guess who they were by what the others in the group thought of them. It was really fun and you didn't have to be over the top to enjoy the game. I could picture a fifth grade class loving to play this game, it would be a great learning tool and would teach the children to befriend everyone on the classroom. Learning games such as this one could help eliminate "clicks" in your class. This is the type of strategies I will use in my classroom, another on I liked is where we had the 5 people up front in our class and we had to guess who they were. These fit my personally better then jumping up and down or dancing around like a flower or sun. This is a great class and it is definitely changing my thinking about the arts. I think it is great to integrate drama into other areas, its changes the fill of the classroom and will help students to learn more in other subjects.

Reflection # 1

Some things I learned so far: The importance of teaching and encouraging creative problem solving, why it is important to integrate art into you class. The difference =between teaching with the arts, in the arts and through the arts to name a few. Reading this chapter brought up some of the importance of being creative. The relation to creativity and work place and solving problems with our economy. I had never thought of how important creativity is to our society. Once it was brought to my attention, it made perfect sense, we need to creative problem solving at one time or another in all occupations. 

      I was surprised by the account of art based schools, it is amazing that they can show through these schools the success of integrating art into the classroom, I'm personally not an artsy person and do feel uncomfortable doing the activities in our class, yet I still think a class like the ones we read about would have been fun and beneficial even for me. I hope to learn more ways to integrate art into my own classroom and become comfortable enough to be able to implement what I've learned in my class. So far I really enjoy our class and have a completely new view on the arts.