In the Early Years and in Primary school one of the most important things we can teach our children is about how to deal with strong feelings. All feelings are normal, but we need to learn how we can show them in healthy ways.
Movement in early stages of education is a fantastic starting point for young children when they are learning about these strong feelings. They may struggle with finding the words to express how they feel. Dance activities that link a growing vocabulary with their personal feelings, help them to articulate what they are experiencing.
The education of feeling may not be measurable, yet it is very important that it is not lost or put aside in favor of what can be assessed Jacquline Smith-Autard (2002, p36 The Art of Dance in Education)
How do we benefit by putting our feelings into words?
Young children talking about their feelings helps them to know themselves better. This in turn can lead to getting along with their classmates, solving problems and being comfortable being close to other people.
It forms an important part how children see themselves and others and how they build healthy relationships in the classroom and beyond. In addition, it promotes other important emotional skills like empathy, self-control, and resilience.
It is important that when we ask children to talk about themselves that we, as educators, listen and support them through the process. Dance activities can provide a gentle way of supporting these young learners.
Consequently, children who feel supported are more ready to learn. They feel comfortable taking risks and making mistakes as a part of learning.
How does dance help children express their feelings?
The artistic dimension of Dance connects the cognitive (thinking) and the affective (feeling) domains. An aesthetic response to dance moves us emotionally. However, as children learn to analyze and talk about their own and other’s dances, they connect with left brain cognition (McCutchen 2006).
Children talking about their feelings is a way for them to tell their own stories. In Early Childhood education settings dance activities are used to engage children telling stories about other people and narratives. For example, We’re going on a Bear Hunt or The Three Billy Goats Gruff. Telling their own stories, that may link to strong emotions, is an extension of that learning experience.
In older year levels, children explore how they choreograph, perform, and interpret dances through character and mood. By experimenting with how they convey emotions as performers or elicit an audience response, they learn more about their relationships with their own feelings and with others.
In the meantime, not only are these young students learning about their strong and often complex feelings,
different ways to express those feelings,
new vocabulary to voice their emotions,
they are also learning about the power of Dance as an art form to express emotions and their own ideas about those emotions.
Example of a Year One dance project
Below is Cristin Carole, Grade 1 teacher, talking about culturally supportive practice. This was a part of the CAN action research project entitled “Creativity, collaboration and Dance Making in Primary School”.
“…this year, I’ve been really pushing myself to allow the students to have more creative opportunities. We started this process with a strong feeling stance. It was the very first lesson I did this year with this intentional focus on student voice and student choice and the students brainstormed feelings and then developed a story that they worked into a dance about their strong feelings. The students shared their brainstorming activities.
They created the dances; the dances were peer reviewed using a checklist. And at that time, we were really only looking at level direction playing. This was earlier in the year in November when we were getting a sense of the compositional elements of dance as well as the compositional elements of our writing.
When it comes to assessment, the students are using, we’re assessing the students, two different ways with a self-assessment tool again around the compositional elements of dance. But now I’m pushing them into assessing how did they collaborate, were they able to work together with their partner?
So, extending that and that’s the end, the students have been just gaining so much in their confidence as they perform so frequently in the classroom and have such ownership of their bodies and ownership of their ideas. It’s been an excellent process.”
Finally…
This wonderful example of classroom practice shows how the children come to have agency in their own creations. Through this agency they then can relate it to many different areas of their life.
In turn, we as teachers, can learn so much about our own emotions and how we relate to individual students in our classrooms. By hearing their personal stories and listening to their perceptions, viewpoints, and ideas we can all learn together.
References
McCutchen, B (2006), Teaching Dance as Art in Education, Human Kinetics, Champaign, Il.
