ESTABLISHING a DANCE CULTURE at YOUR SCHOOL Scott Williams
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DUDES DON’T DANCE?!?! ESTABLISHING A DANCE CULTURE AT YOUR SCHOOL Scott Williams Meriwether Lewis School Charlottesville, VA @MLSPE MLSPE on Youtube MLSPE.org Camp4Real [email protected] Thanks for attending my session and getting more dance into our schools! Here are some links to the things I shared as well as some strategies that have been successful for me! Uptown Funk Classroom Dance (modified from Susan Flynn’s version) Chainsaw Classroom/PE Dance 2015 Halftime Show-This folder contains the music, final performance at Southern District, and an individual tutorial for each part of the dance if you need it! Halftime Show Tips and Tricks to Make it Happen! Song Mixes-Students of all ages love these mixes as it constantly transitions to different songs/genres and allows us to feature (clean parts of) songs not appropriate for PE! (see below for more!) Strategies to get the Boys (and Girls) Dancing! STAY RELEVANT/CURRENT-Try to keep up with the current hits when appropriate. I try to update my song list throughout the year as we are constantly adding songs and always on the lookout for more. The Men of Meriwether always add videos that are current and modify (understatement) the moves so even our K-1 kids can follow along! MAKE IT SILLY-My kids get bored with the Wobble and Cupid because they are simple and easy, so I try to jazz it up! I love slowing down the tempo for the little ones when they are learning and speeding it up for the big kids after I know they’ve got it! It is simple to do with any software (Audacity for PC users, Garage Band for Macs), but feel free to reach out to your tech person or, better yet, one of your former or current students for help! GET ‘EM EARLY-As soon as the kids walk in on day one, they are dancing! This is especially true for our K-1 kids. We are a dancing school and our little ones don’t know any different. If they are doing it from day one, they are more likely o be comfortable with it. DANCE OFFS/BOYS VS GIRLS-Dance offs are improvisational dance competitions that are always voted as one of the favorite instant activities! Each team lines up on opposite sides of the halfcourt line, face each other, and dance away! The teacher picks the winner of each round (we normally do 3 quick rounds if time permits). Extra points for synchronization (hard to achieve with improv but always seems to happen!) singing the lyrics, and breaking out sick moves I’ve never seen before! Have a kid who doesn’t like dancing? Have him/her be the reason their team wins a dance off round by highlighting their efforts and it can forever change their dance experience! A former student who was autistic hated dancing. But one day he happened to give great effort and I told the class he was the reason they won. The kids carried him off the court as my boy was BEAMING! Needless to say, his dancin’ feet never slowed down after that day! The only time I ever do boys vs girls (b v g as my kids call it) is during dance offs. I feel it’s more beneficial than not as it keeps the boys very engaged as they love playing the girls and if it helps advance dance, I will make an exception on the b v g rule I have in my program. ATHLETES (ENERTAINERS)-Many of our kids look up to pro athletes, so why not embrace that when trying to get kids to buy in? There is dancing everywhere in sports and you can find YouTube videos everywhere. Stay current and try to highlight the current big stars if possible. Be careful of the accompanying songs though as many are inappropriate! Here are a few I found that work for my school: Steph Curry and Lebron NFL Touchdown Dances NBA Dancing OTHER DUDES DANCING-My school is lucky enough to have enough males working there to form our own dance group. Although I imagine Meriwether Lewis School to be in the minority in that great category, there are other options for you: -Gather some dads from each grade to make their own dances (or simply copy some of our dances!!) and turn it into a competition. It can also be part of a fundraiser, part of your dance unit, or even an adult portion of the talent show! -Watch the Men of Meriwether or other males dancing like Chad, Ben and Jason! -Tread carefully, but almost all hip hop stars dance! There are some clean videos out there that you can show your students! INCORPORATE SPORTS MOVES-Have the kids mimic doing their fave sports moves during a dance or better yet, incorporate a ball into the routine! YOUTUBE/GOOGLE IT-Anything you need, it’s likely out there. So if you are looking a middle school routine choreographed by a certain age/gender/whatever, you will likely find it. CELEBRATE DANCE! There are numerous ways I do this at my school: -Use dance as a reward (especially when in lieu of a junk food party). For example, winner of the fundraiser gets to have an all-request dance party in the gym outside of regular PE time! -Dance off Tournament of Champions-We have an annual tradition for the upper grades (3-5) in which entire grades dance against each other in an awesome environment! Winner of first round plays the #1 seed (not always the 5th grade!) for the title! -Meriwether Movers-Students and teachers create dance videos that are streamed to the entire school EVERY DAY before morning announcements so we start the day off right! -Celebrate Great Work-Students who create dances that take our school by storm are rewarded by: 1. Having their videos posted on YouTube 2. Leading our school- wide morning meetings 3. Performing at the Meriwether Mover concert (students get in front of entire school and lead them in their dance creation) held every other year celebrating the best dance hits! -Hallway Dance-All 440+ of our students come into hallway as we blast music from a well-known song that all grades are familiar with and love! We send some responsible “big kids” to the lower hallways to help lead our younger students. -Halftime Show- Now a rite of passage at our school (6 years running), our 5th graders participate at halftime of our high school’s basketball game as we dance to a medley of 6-7 songs (old and new) that always blows the crowd away! I have music and choreography for six routines that you are welcome to for free! Be sure to pick the “crosstown rival” game so we have as many people watching as possible! Instant advocacy for our program and profession! .