Mrs. Moon's Arts Bridge Blog

The best lesson I have done yet: Shapes. Why was it the best? We used white elastic bands sewn in a loop as a prop for making and understanding triangles, rectangles, circles, squares, and more! The first part of the lesson consisted of one student creating the designated shape inside the elastic, while the rest of the class called out the defining characteristics (or "things that are special") about that shape. They experienced movement based on the features of each shape, such as dancing round and smooth for a circle, ending by melting to a ball on the ground. Or angular for a triangle and jumping 3 times (because it has three angles) to end in a shape with sharp angles. We observed and explored triangles, rectangles, circles, and squares in this way, and at the end, I even taught them about pentagons, which I made in the elastic by using my hands, feet, and head as the 5 vertices. Then, along with an explanation of the privilege of using an elastic, I gave each student

A couple weeks ago I did a lesson on mathematical comparisons where we used greater than, less than, and equal to signs for inequalities with numbers in the hundreds. This may have been my favorite and most successful integrated lesson that we have done up to this point. I loved being able to see the kids apply their math skills in their dancing and their dance skills in their mathematics. First we went through what each sign meant (>,<,=) so that the kids could move forward in the lesson. For the first activity we created an example with the class. We had everyone who loved summer time slide over to one side of the room, while every who loved winter time slid over to the other side. Then I went down each line on the sides of the room and tapped each student on the head as we counted how many were in each group. (When I tapped them they gave their whole body a shake). We wrote the numbers on the board with a blank space in the middle, such as: "15___10." We had crea

Last Tuesday I did a dance lesson for my 2nd grade class on Addition Strategies. It was a well thought out lesson with a lot of fun activities and exploration, but in the end I ran out of time to finish the whole lesson. It is not so unusual to run out of time when you are doing creative dance lessons with kids, but this one felt kind of stale when it ended. At first I wasn't sure why the lesson did not feel successful. After all, I had gotten through a lot of fun material, but for some reason I could tell that the kids did not have as enjoyable of a time. They gave me some blank stares, had many requests for different activities that we could be doing, and overall seemed a little less excited. I have come to the conclusion that the reason they did not have as much fun last Tuesday was related to the fact that I did not finish the lesson. By not finishing they had missed out on the Creating and Performing portion of the Addition Strategies lesson plan. When I came back on Thurs

The Scholar: My name is Alli Moon! I am a Dance Education major at BYU and I am also pursuing a Math Education minor. I have fallen in love with education and the wonderful ideas and theories behind it. I have been particularly interested in dance because I feel like it is an art form that involves the whole person (Body, Mind, and Spirit) in a way that no other form can. I have been studying mostly contemporary and modern dance, but I have also found a profound interest in world dance. For the past two years I have been a member of BYU's International Folk Dance Ensemble (IFDE) and I have been able to learn about many different cultures and people through dance. With IFDE I have been able to dance and teach dance around California, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. I love dance so much and I am passionate about sharing it, especially to students in the elementary classroom setting. I am very excited this semester to be involved as a dance scholar in the BYU arts bridge program.