As a generalist class teacher, Kate taught in a conventional classroom in which students had their own desks and chairs. For the dance lesson that I observed, her students helped her to move all desks and chairs to the edge of the classroom. This opened up a large enough space for the style of movement the students explored during the lesson.
4.7.3.1 Planned focus for the lesson
In her use of Orff processes to specifically support a curriculum learning area other than music, Kate’s lesson was unique in my study. Kate was working with her Year 5 and 6 classes on a religious education unit, entitled ‘Introducing children to prayer/Karakia’; consequently her focus was religious education objectives, not music or movement learning intentions. However, Kate believed that it was her learning in the Orff approach that had equipped her to work with her students to develop original sequenced choreographies to express prayer. These choreographies were to become liturgical dance (not performance pieces in the usual sense) incorporated into the celebration of the Eucharist. Kate believed that it was her Orff learning that had given her the confidence, knowledge and skills to work with her students in liturgical dance. She had taught this unit for the first time the year before and thought it had ‘gone very well’. Because Kate had indicated that the students were rather shy, I went for a preparatory visit prior to this observation, where I was introduced to the students and the purpose of my visit explained.
4.7.3.2 The lesson
On the day of the formal observation, the second lesson in the unit, the desks were moved (as for the previous visit) to the sides of the room to clear a large central
area for movement. Kate then gathered her students around her and reminded
them that respect and reverence (terms that were familiar to the students since their arrival at the school in Year 1) were at the heart of prayer. She then asked the
question, ‘How did we use our heart, will, mind and body in our gestural prayer yesterday?’ The students listened attentively and responses such as listed below were eagerly offered:
• I used my mind to think about others in need. (G) • I used my will to join in. (G),
• I used my heart to talk to God. (G)
• I used my body; it was hard at first but it felt a little bit good cause I haven’t done that before. (B)
• It felt really different to any other movement I have done. (G) • It felt really peaceful. (B)
• It did not look like we were praying but we were. (G)
Recording some key words on a whiteboard, Kate recapped on the contributions and then invited the students to find their own space and, using the ideas
discussed, or specific prayers they knew, directed them to explore non-locomotor
movement (standing or kneeling in the same place) at different levels (high, low,
medium).
As the students freely explored movement in their own space, Kate made positive comments to the group as a whole such as: ‘Well done,’ ‘You’re doing well.’ Kate then invited the students to think about the different moods of short prayerful phrases such as:
• Loving God, hear my prayer • I am sorry, God
• Praise and thanks to you, O Gracious God • Come in and join the celebration
• We are happy to be God’s children.
She then directed the students to find a partner and choose a phrase as the basis
for the creation of their movement sequence. In self-chosen pairs (there was one
boy and girl partnership, the rest being same sex partnerships), turn-taking was evident in the sharing of ideas and modelling of movement. Over 15 minutes or so, each partnership came up with a sequence of movements that they repeatedly practised and refined. As they worked together, Kate circulated and watched, listened, encouraged, and at times offered specific suggestions. She asked them to remember their preparatory work with levels, to think about contrast and to decide whether they would be standing face-to-face or side-by-side.
Kate then played a track from Monica Brown’s CD Holy Ground (M. Brown, 1991) and invited the students to take turns to perform their sequence to this
musical backing as a prayer, not as a performance to be critiqued. The students
watched thoughtfully as each partnership performed their piece.
4.7.3.3 Kate’s reflection
Reflecting on the lesson, Kate said she was pleased that the children had ‘engaged
so well with the creative process’. In response to a sense that the work was ‘in progress’ rather than complete, Kate decided to design a further lesson, where she
would invite the students to extend their sequences by working in bigger groups. She had observed that there had been a lot of trying out and discarding of ideas as the students went along and commented that a creative process such as this needed time. ‘It takes little bit of time for people to be able to think about what they want to do and settle on one idea, but that’s totally fine, that’s part of the creative process.’ She was also aware that some of her students were using moves
from their own cultural worship traditions and she was keen to learn more about this by having the students, if they were willing, share more about this in class.