Mrs. Moon's Arts Bridge Blog

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...