TEACHERS USING THEATER AND DANCE TO TEACH

I LOVE the idea of learning vocabulary through acting out the word. I know I would like this so much more if I were a student. For children with anxiety or disability that hinders them from acting out things in front of others could maybe group up in groups of five for this kind of activity and they can help collaborate what movements should be done for the word and maybe get two students to act it out in front of the class, but they would still learn it from doing the movement in their own small group where it isn't as stressful. We could even turn this into a game and the group with the best movement wins- cause we all know all ages of students love competition. What other kind of activities would you guys try to do with Brittany's art and theater suggestion?

Brittany,

I think this method of teaching is AWESOME. This was actually the only way I remembered all of the presidents in third grade, there was a a song that went to the tune of Row Your Boat I believe. Singing the presidents made it way easier than having to simply memorize a bunch of words in order. Think about it, singing is one of the easiest ways to memorize long successions of words YEAH. :-)

This is one of my favorite teaching methods ever! I can think of several examples just from the last few years of high school- acting out Hamlet as a class, learning a song to remember the Chinese dynasties (I still remember it!) and, weird as it sounds, walking around the classroom practicing a recitation. It helped us remember what we wanted to say, because we could think "Ok, when I was standing by the window, I was talking about this. When I was by the teacher's desk, I was talking about that." It may not exactly be "theatre" in the traditional sense, but anything that involves the different sorts of "learning styles" is a fantastic way to capture students' interests, and get them out of their desks for a bit. It's been proven that using information in different ways helps students learn, and retain the information better. (Think teaching another student the information, or reading your notes aloud before a test.) I always think that if a student is having fun, they're more likely to remember what it is they're learning. Involving theatre, dance, or any other sort of art is different than the typical day-to-day. I would love to use these methods in my classroom, as I think that it would not only be way more fun than lecturing, but also help students retain the information better.

Interesting article!! rachelgoodbar I also thought about Hannah Montana and how my teacher actually played the clip. I know in most of my lesson I try to incorporate an activity that gets students moving or engaged in different ways like painting, dancing, or singing. One of my favorite is the Atom Song that is set to the Addams Family tune. Is allows for a break between hard topics and gives the student a break. It allows for student engagement.

I just read the title of this thread and remembered something really cool:

I don't know if you guys have seen the movie Gridiron Gang, but it's pretty much about The Rock coaching a football team comprised of teenage inmates, it's pretty good watch it.
Anyways, at the beginning of the movie when they first form the football team (The Mustangs) The Rock gets them all organized on the field for warm-ups, and he says they're gonna start with MUSTANG jacks (Jumping jacks: with each jumping jack you spell out MUSTANG instead of counting). So they start doing jumping jacks and low and behold none of these TEENAGE kids know how to spell mustang. So The Rock basically ends up teaching them how to spell mustang through doing jumping jacks.

Just a C00L example of this in film!