Year+2+PE

PE Year 2 || =Dance: electric storm=

Information ||

Objectives
• To perform body actions with control and coordination • To choose movements with different dynamic qualities to choreograph a short dance • To improve dances by analysing digital photographs of positions

Prior learning
To benefit from this lesson, children should: • be able to use space safely; • have explored a range of body actions using the whole body and individual parts of the body; • be able to create and copy a short movement phrase; • have explored a range of dynamic qualities, e.g. heavy, light, strong, fast.

Vocabulary
sharp, jagged, strong, zigzag

Resources
• data projector or interactive whiteboard (or screen) linked to a laptop • digital camera • presentation software to display sound and images (in this Example, //PowerPoint//). • presentation file with images of storms (in this Example, images have been taken from the web) • music that could be linked to stormy weather

ICT skills needed by teachers
To teach this unit, teachers need to know how to: • import images into a presentation; • use a digital camera and download the images to display.

Preparation for this lesson
You will need to prepare a presentation file of electrical storms. The presentation should include images and sounds of thunder, lightning and heavy rain. You can find images from websites such as http://images.google.com/images by typing words such as ‘lightning’, ‘heavy rain’ and ‘storm’ into the search box. You will also need some short music extracts that represent different types of weather.

Lesson extract ||

Introduction
Show the children your prepared presentation of an electrical storm on the whiteboard. Discuss the images: Q How do these images make you feel?

Warm-up
Ask children to travel around to a variety of music that represents weather. Q What sort of weather could this music describe? Q When you dance to this music, should your movements be heavy or light? Slow or fast?

Main activity
Show the slide(s) showing lightning. Q What shapes could we make to demonstrate the sharp, jagged lines of the lightning? Ask the children to work in pairs to make these shapes. Q What was good about your partner’s shapes? Show the other slides to the children again, but this time ask the children to work in small groups to put movements to the other weather images, for example: • rain: travel lightly on their feet and then heavily, depending on the type of rain; • thunder: travel around and on the count of 5 make a sudden movement. Choose a few children to perform in front of the others. Q Which slide do you think this movement went with? Q How can you tell? Show the whole presentation and allow the children time to choreograph a short section of dance to accompany it. Use the digital camera to take pictures of children’s lightning positions, or ask a teaching assistant to do this.

Plenary
Ask half of the class to perform their sequences to the rest of the class as you show the slides. Then repeat with the other half of the class. Q What sort of actions did children do for the different slides? Q How did they change their actions/movements? Display the digital pictures onto the whiteboard. Ask children to look at the pictures of their lightning positions and evaluate them. Q What’s good about these positions? Q How could the positions be improved next time?

Notes ||

Links to QCA schemes of work
The lesson links to: QCA PE Unit 2: Dance activities (2)

Context of this lesson
This lesson could be at the start of a unit of dance work based on weather. Children could also move to gentler weather, such as sunshine, breeze or gentle rain. They could develop a sequence that moves from one type of weather to another and discuss the difference, e.g. heavy/light, slow/fast, smooth/jerky.

Subject links
Links could be made to geography work on weather, to descriptive prose or poetry in literacy, and to positions, directions and types of movement in mathematics.

Why use ICT?
The advantages of using ICT are as follows. • The Internet gives access to a much wider range of information and resource material than is offered by the traditional print resources in a school. • ICT allows teachers to project enlarged visual images for whole-class demonstration and discussion. • Using digital cameras, teachers can record then help children to evaluate and improve their performances. • The quality of images can be motivating and stimulating.