Fine Arts - Dance Fourth, Fifth & Sixth Grades
Dance of Friendship
Description
The Olympic Games provide an opportunity to make friends with people from around the
world. This activity encourages students to create a dance that celebrates the excitement
of making new friends.
Themes
Friendship, Celebration, Courage, Heroes
Core Life Skill Connections
Life-long learning shows aesthetic awareness by participating in the arts for
enjoyment and personal growth.
Complex Thinking uses creative, critical problem-solving, decision-making, and
innovative thinking processes; puts information together in new and unique ways; balances
reason and emotion in decision making; considers new ideas and various perspectives to
broaden insight and increase understanding.
Effective Communication successfully interacts with others using a
variety of mediums; expresses ideas, feelings, and beliefs aesthetically; evaluates the
effectiveness of communication; receives and understands ideas communicated through a variety
of modes.
Collaboration works effectively with others to identify and achieve specified results.
Learning Outcomes
Students Will:
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Experience the Olympic value of friendship through the arts
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Experience how creating and performing or exhibiting together is a way of making friends,
establishing traditions, developing friendships, celebrating events with friends, and
making awards for friends and acts of friendship
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Perform dances
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Develop aesthetic appreciation for dance
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Use the tools of choreography
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Learn how to use the elements of dance to perceive and interpret the world
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Create a strong artistic communication
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Activity: Create and Share a Friends Dance
Preparation
Assemble children's books and dance videos that focus upon the theme of friendship.
Assemble information about the Olympic value of friendship. This may be a story about a
friendship between athletes or friendships that may have occurred because of competition at
the Olympics or other competitive event.
Assemble stories of the good that comes into people's lives through friendship.
Tools and Resources
Video resources of dances that demonstrate friendship.
Children's literature that focus upon the theme of friendship.
Instruction
Explain the following:
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One of the best prizes won in the Olympics is a new friend. People come together
from all over the world as perfect strangers and go home with a new friend!
Friendship is one of the Olympic Values that will be celebrated at the 2002 Winter
Olympics.
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Friendship often arises from people cooperating together-- such as athletes on a
team, news reporters and camera operators, people making food, or score keepers
timing and counting the events. You have probably worked with others to make a
team. You probably met some of your friends while you were working with them to
do something fun.
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At the elementary level the Olympic Value of Friendship has great meaning for
the student. It is an integral part of their daily lives and development. Who
are our friends? How do we meet or create new friendships? How can I become a
better friend to someone? The arts touch all aspects of a child's being; the
physical, emotional, intellectual, and social to name a few.
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As children interact within a structured, creative problem-solving activity,
they develop the social skills necessary to help form friendships. These
learning activities will build upon friendship 1) as an act of participating
fully with others in creating or performing pieces of art that celebrate
activities friends do together, and 2) by sharing these songs, dances, art,
and stories with others as gifts and products of friendship.
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Explore activities that are performed with a friend are shared feelings in friendships
through pantomime. Manipulate the movement by increasing the range.
Discuss the concept of abstraction and the process used to abstract a movement (ie.
Changing its time, space, or energy).
Explore the movement selected through the process of abstraction. Create with a partner
a sequence of movements that friends might do together.
Expand upon this movement by altering the time, space, or energy. Create a composition
that reflects the Olympic value of friendship.
Explain how using dance has helped you to make friends or reward people for acts of
friendship.
Explain how working together on a dance helped you to learn about someone else and use
their talents to achieve a goal.
Assessment
Students will:
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Perform a dance on the theme of friendship developed through sport activities
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Communicate ways in which friendships are developed while working together on
common goals or activities
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Extensions
Once students have learned to express ideas about friendship through dance, try to find
famous dances that depict friendship in folk dances, ballet, scenes in musical theatre,
movies, and other dance forms. Have the class create an exhibition of dance that shows
how friends are made during the winter.
Via the Internet you can give the gift of dance to the children in a school from another
country.
Further Research
Educators will want to preview these web sites carefully.
Songs
Here are ideas for songs from the Silver Burdett Ginn Music Connection Series. Most of the
songs are appropriate for numerous grade levels.
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Kindergarten
Hello, Ev'rybody p. 40 (movement suggested in lesson)
Hurray! I Like It Here p. 4
We Give Thanks p. 96
Second Grade
Best Friends p. 116
Donne-moi la main (Give Me Your Hand) p. 118
Ev'rybody's Welcome p. 149
How Good and Joyous p. 32
Little Bit More of Love p. 209
That's What Friends Are For p. 117
Working Together p. 160
You're a Friend of Mine p. 205
Third Grade
American Children p. 130
It's a Small World p. 16
Make a Rainbow p. 128
The Jasmine Flower p. 58
The Surprise p. 32
We Come to Greet You in Peace (Hevenu Shalom Aleichem) p. 124
Fourth Grade
Candle on the Water p. 98
Common Ground p. 192
Happy Days p. 62
Make New Friends p. 275
Music, Music, Music p. 77
Side by Side p. 85
Song for the Children p. 4
That's How I'd Be Without You p. 42
The Answer Lies in... p. 96
Cantare, Cantaras (I Will Sing, You Will Sing) p. 226
Give a Little Love p. 18
Hineh Mah Tov p. 279
Lean on Me p. 128
Love in Any Language p. 216
We Are the World p. 4
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