Overview:
Movement appeals to young children and is an integral part of child development. It allows students to connect music concepts to action and learn through trial and error. Movement helps children in their physical growth and brain development through active contact with external reality and strengthening a connection to abstract ideas. New research in neuroscience indicates that active learning through movement can accelerate a student’s learning process. Students absorb music skills better while doing, engaging their bodies and minds. Movement stimulates all the senses and aids in the development of kinesthetic intelligence and self-expression. When students participate in music and movement activities in a group, they also develop and refine their social skills, learn to work as a team, learn to share, and learn how to be creative in a group environment. In this class, movement serves as the conduit for creating integrated music experiences that illustrate abstract musical concepts
Objectives:
Students will be able to:
- Articulate teaching approaches for preparing students movement activities.
- Identify effective age-appropriate introductory movement activities.
- Identify ways in which movement can teach music elements.
- Compare and contrast different types of movement activities.
- Demonstrate effective methods for leading movement activities.
- Identify and describe how movement activities are assessed.
Move to Express Imagery
Expressive movement also allows a student to explore his or her own “space,” as well as express reactions to music. A student's life experience limits the movement they can associate with imagery. For example, a lesson in which students are asked to move like elephants while listening to “The Elephants” from Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals, would be preceded by a visit to the zoo to see the elephants or pictures and movies of elephants.
As introductory activities for creative and expressive movement, the teacher could:
- Ask the students to show how they would move if they were carrying a heavy load, or how they would move if their hand touched a hot stove
- Ask the students to use their entire bodies in a variety of free responses to coordinate with music
- Have the students move to imitate specific animals
- Play Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumble Bee” and have students move their fingers on their arms to imitate the bumblebee
- Play Debussy’s “Jimbo’s Lullaby” from The Children’s Corner Suite and ask students to stretch slowly from one side to another or walk slowly, swinging their arms from side to side
- Sing “The People on the Bus” and have students create movements that portray the words