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This lesson was taught on Friday, September 13, 2019. The lesson focused on Counting "how many" Within Ten. This was such a great integrated lesson in my mind as in both dance and music artists are constantly counting! Knowing the children, and having worked with several young children previously I was excited to teach this lesson as they are usually very excited to count, move, and participate! I looked forward to teaching this concept.
To begin, We danced and moved to the song "Funky Count to Tens". I had the students freeze when the music stopped to practice for upcoming movement, listen to my cues to stop on certain numbers, and count along with the song through the entirety. Just as I had expected, the students' enthusiastic voices loudly counted with the song. I loved hearing their voices count fluently in rhythm while they creatively moved and froze silently! The students amazed me with their attention and seriousness of the cues that I gave them throughout the warm-up/ introduction.
We then counted to 10 as a whole class. Again this was so exciting and unifying to hear all of their voices! Then we added movement-- let's jump on each number we say, let's clap, let's tap on our fingers, etc. Then I got into the part that I was most excited for-- creating a dance as a class! I looked for quiet listeners then they chose a movement. We did that movement one time all together and said one. Then I called on another student who gave a movement. We did this movement two times all together and said two. This pattern continued until we got all the way to ten. By the end we had very creative movements and were all up dancing together. We performed this dance all together as a class. It was so fun to challenge the students to use different levels, or to do it differently than they had previously done the action the time before. They are so innately willing to try new things and creative! They do not think about failing, but gave every movement their all whatever their all was!
I then had the students choose starting and ending shapes, they could follow the same dance we made together or they could create their own dance as we danced through this process a few more times as a class but rather individually as students altered and choreographed their own dance! I loved this dance!! I loved watching them dance! At the end we concluded by counting to ten all together once more. Then I asked the students to show me their favorite movement. It was so fun to see their personalities and hear their logic: "I always saved spinning for number 10 because I love spinning and wanted to do it the most times!" The concepts they understood were much more than counting, but included value, friendship, creativity, and a physical representation of the number and values that the students counted.
FULL LESSON PLAN HERE: