Group Members Names: Samantha Majiedt, Nila Rothman, Ken Caron-Quinn, Addy Collins
Tang Space Used: Elevator and Bridge
Art Piece Used: Elevator Music 47: Xenometok for Mutualism
Topic/theme: Identity and Introspection
In this lesson, students will be able to:
1. recognize and describe parts of their identity
2. explore how movements help them to connect with themselves
3. devise, create, and perform a movement piece to illustrate parts of their identity.
Reasons for choosing identity: Identity is essential to learn at a young age. We are choosing to
explore identity with these young kids as having a strong sense of identity will aid in having a
sense of belonging, wellbeing, and confidence. Having a strong sense of identity also grounds
one in reality as people with a strong sense of identity are less likely to get distracted by things
that are outside of their perceived identity.
BrainDance 10 minutes
1. Breathwork : This breathwork exercise will mimic the motion of a balloon expanding and
deflating. The student will execute an inhalation and exhalation exercise based on the
imagery of a balloon. This will assist them in collecting themselves and refocusing their
energy and attention to the present moment.
- The students will pretend to be/imagine being a balloon. They will deeply inhale
and imagine that they’re expanding like a balloon (they should try and make big
poses or stances). This will wake their brains up and refocus their attention in
case they have lost focus along the warmup. They will then exhale/deflate like a
balloon. Students are welcome to make balloon deflating sounds as well as
mimic a floppy/deflating motion with their bodies to imitate a deflating balloon.
- This exercise may last for about 40 seconds.
2. Tactile: Energy transfer and recognition game. This game will allow the students to
recognize their different body parts, which also constitute their identity. By transferring
warmth to their body parts, recognizing them and saying hello to their body parts, the
students will become aware of their body and realize that identity constitutes their
physical selves as well.
a. The students will vigorously rub their hands together in front of themselves to
generate warmth between their hands. Once the hands are warm, the students
will then “transfer” the heat/energy from their hands to their bodies/body parts.
While squeezing, the students will recognize their different body parts. For
example, the students will rub their hands till warm, squeeze their arms and say
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
out loud “This is my arm. Hello arm!”. They could repeat the hand rubbing
motion and move/transfer the warmth to their stomach and say “This is my
stomach. Hello stomach!”. This would be repeated for the legs and head.
b. 90s
Core-distal: Energy sending from core to friends 70s
Students will rub their hands together vigorously, if able, and send the “energy” to
friends by suddenly extending their arms (almost in a fire/energy blast motion) to the
friend they want to send the energy to. They then immediately ask the friend questions
such as “how are you?” “
Head-tail: seaweed spine and in isolation
- Seaweed spine; students will act as if they are seaweed in the waves, and
imagine how seaweed or they would move as the current gets stronger then
slower. At first with the whole body.
- Thereafter, the seaweed motion would be isolated to the head, then spine,
pelvis, legs, finally feet.
- Ask “how could your [body part] be seaweed?” as a transition
Upper-lower: Act like a robot upper and lower body
- To practice isolating the upper and lower body, the students would isolate their
upper body to move in a stiff or robot-like manner. This would transition to the
students isolating their legs in a robot-like manner.
Cross-lateral: fruit ninja, slice fruit across
- Students would be reminded of the mobile phone game, Fruit Ninja. The
students would imagine large fruits in front of them. They would then need to
slice the fruit up by cutting the fruit diagonally across their body. The students
will be invited to slice first with only hands, thereafter arms, then progress to
legs, then finally whole body.
Vestibular: Spin like a Beyblade or tornado (tornado only if students do not know what a
beyblade is).
- The students would finish off by pretending that they are the toy “BeyBlade” or
simply a tornado and would imitate the movement by spinning around at least 3
times.
8. Breathwork cooldown: This breathwork exercise will repeat the balloon imagery
inhalation and exhalation exercise as performed at the beginning of the BrainDance. This
will assist them in collecting themselves and refocusing their energy and attention to the
present moment.
The students will pretend to be/imagine being a balloon. They will deeply inhale and
imagine that they’re expanding like a balloon (they should try and make big poses or
stances). This will wake their brains up and refocus their attention in case they have lost
focus along the warmup. They will then exhale/deflate like a balloon. Students are
welcome to make balloon deflating sounds as well as mimic a floppy/deflating motion
with their bodies to imitate a deflating balloon.
- This can last for approximately 40 seconds.
Detailed Lesson Plans
00:00-5:00: Introductions with instructors and students (Lead: Samantha, others follow)
Instructor (Samantha): Welcome, welcome everybody! We hope you’re excited for the lesson
today, because we are! First, before we get into anything, we’ll just introduce ourselves.
The members will go around introducing themselves in an engaged manner. Then we will
invite the students to introduce themselves as well.
Say your name and if you were an ice cream flavor what ice cream flavor would you be
Instructor (Samantha): To kids: “Our plan for today is to watch a very exciting and interesting
video. Then, we’re going to wake our bodies up with a dance! We’re going to talk about our
identities, show you a little dance called the brain dance and we’ll be inviting you to dance as
well! Doesn’t that sound so fun? Can I get a whoop whoop?” *Only ask for a “whoop whoop” if
the group seems receptive thus far, if not, do not ask.
5:00-10:00: Go into the elevator with the students and show them part of the video (Lead:
Samantha)
Questions to ask after watching the video and leaving the elevator:
● How did it make you feel?
● What do you like about the video?
● What do you not like about the video?
● Does it remind you of anything in your own life?
The mentor will use Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) to respond to the students' commentaries.
The Visual Thinking Strategies encourage students to dissect and analyze the artwork by asking
them the above questions which will allow them to engage and perform better.
The mentor will briefly explain the story of the three sisters and the artwork.
Instructor: The artwork tells the story of three sisters who feel disconnected from one another,
themselves and their identity. They’re trying to understand and connect to their past, present,
and future. They’re also trying to understand and connect to their identities so as to connect to
themselves and each other.
So, is there anyone here who knows what an identity is? Students, if willing, will answer the
identity question. We’ll take 2-3 answers before consolidating their definitions and further
explaining it to them. That’s great friends, thank you for sharing! An identity is everything/every
part that makes up ourselves. This means that our memories, our culture, our experiences and
even our favorite color is a part of our identity. And identity is so important because it makes us
feel like we belong somewhere. It's also important because it makes you more aware of
yourself. You are able to know yourself better when you know the different parts of your
identity.
10:00-20:00: Leave elevator and start the brain dance (see detailed plan above)(Everyone as
instructor)
Have kids sit in a big circle and we will talk about identity with them (Lead: Ken)
20:00-22:00: Have kids sit in a big circle and we will talk about identity with them (Lead: Ken)
Instructor: Now friends, we’re going to talk about identities! Ooh aah! Remember how we
spoke about identities earlier? So, is there anyone here who can remind us of what an identity
is? Students, if willing, will answer the identity question. We’ll take 2-3 answers before
consolidating their definitions. That’s great friends, thank you for sharing! Now we’re going to
go into separate groups to do another fun and exciting exercise. This timer it will be an Identity
Dance. . We then usher kids to make groups, instructors will pair off kids into 4 groups.
Instructors will then join these groups in order to guide the students to their dance.
Instructors: “Think about something that makes you you, do you have an idea? We are all going
to make our own dances about that thing! For example, ice cream is my favorite food and it
makes me happy so my dance will be happy. But ice cream makes me cold so my dance will be
happy and cold looking, and so on”.
Instructors will guide the group on what their identity is, asking questions such as, “what sports
do you play”, “What is your favorite activity”, “Do you speak any other languages”, “what is your
favorite subject”. For example if a student likes math, an instructor may guide the student to
make a dance that simulates writing math on a board. If a student likes soccer then that student
may “dance” kicking the ball. Combining all of the identities into one dance will make the who
dance.
A mentor could progress to demonstrate a dance, yet we want to leave this up to the students'
creativity.
22:00-30:00: Have students work on their own expressions of identity through movement.
(Lead: Nila)
Mentors will go around assisting students or guiding them. Guidance can be done through
guiding questions rather than direct instructions. If the students would like to pair up to assist
one another that will be welcomed.
30:00-45:00: We will reconvene together as a class and wrap up the lesson (Lead:Addy)
Instructor (Addy): To Kids: “So I hope you've had a fun time exploring different parts of your
identity. Now we’re going to create a safe circle in which we’ll all be sitting down while
volunteers will present their identity dance.”
Note: this is an invitation as we dont want to force students to perform.
Music will be provided. Music will be simplistic.
This section moves into the exit ticket.
Exit Ticket/Assessment: (Lead:Addy)
Identity dance - we will ask all the kids to think about parts of their identity (like ‘where are you
from’, ‘what sports do you play’, ‘what do you want to be when you grow up’, etc) after we have
divided ourselves into 3-4 groups. We will demonstrate or give examples of different parts of
our identities. For instance, part of Samantha’s identity consists of her love for books, or her
nationality. Therefore, she would create a simple improvised movement piece on books, for
instance she could pretend to be reading in her dance. Thereafter, We will ask them to think
about how you might show those parts of your identity through movement (make little dance
moves). Their exit ticket will be to make a dance that shows parts of their identity in a minimum
of 3 dance moves or 3 aspects of their identity.
After collaborating and assisting as a group, we will then present them to one another
accompanied by the music added below.
Finally we’ll repeat the balloon exercise as a cool down and to say goodbye.
Reference List:
Bibliography
Gilbert, Anne G. 2006. “Brain-compatible Dance Education”. Human Kinetics
Publishers.
Susan K. Green., and Margaret E. Gredler. 2002. “A Review and Analysis of
Constructivism for School-Based Practic” School Psychology Review, 31
(1) : 53-70, https://10.1080/02796015.2002.12086142
Schraw, Gregory., and Aaron S. Richmond. 2022. "Using Visual Displays to Improve
Classroom Thinking." Educational Research: Theory and Practice 33 (2) :
80-102. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1352339
Grand Valley State University. "Visual Thinking Strategies." Grand Valley State
University. Last modified February 9, 2023. Accessed October 19, 2023.
https://www.gvsu.edu/artgallery/visual-thinking-strategies-152.htm.
Tateo, L. 2014. “The Dialogical Dance: Self, Identity Construction, Positioning and
Embodiment in Tango Dancers.” Integrative Psychological and Behavioral
Science 48: 299–321.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-014-9258-2
Newman, Barbara M., and Philip R. Newman. 1978. “The concept of identity: research
and theory.” Adolescence 13 (49): 157-66.
Music:
https://youtu.be/fgG7azO8Ecg?si=NJ0K0FeYOhRkF6Gl