| Bonanopstekker | Lead students directly into the song and do the dance prescribed in the Shenanigans CD |
| I purposefully didn't give a lot of time for the students to get settled, and so I led them straight into the dance. Enough students remembered so that those who didn't had plenty of examples. I still had to prompt students before each transition, and we used basically a simplified dance similar to what we did a few weeks ago. The dance went ok, although there were more collisions than we had before. For both classes, I took some time to have the students think of aspects of the activity that "worked" or "didn't work", and most realized that the colliding/tripping/crashing wasn't all that much fun. The Bonanopstekker, danced without holding hands (which we did) does force students to be more aware of the their surroundings, and so I hope that that awareness stays with them for a while. | |
| El Juego Chirimbolo | Teach the song, then teach the dance |
| I talked a little bit about Cinco de Mayo for a little bit, and then I proceeded to teach the song to the students. It's a pretty simple song, and fortunately the lyrics, which are in Spanish, were mostly understandable to the students, despite my poor Spanish accent. I then started teaching the dance. I taught by singing the song with me moving the appropriate body part to the song. After another repetition, most of the class was following me. I then had the students try walking while doing the movements, which actually is a lot harder than one thinks, as the students were asked to walk sideways (and without partners). I then added the twirl to close off the dance. Next, I chose a student, and we both did the movements together. The dance typically has partners hold hands, but I didn't ask the students to do that through most of the dance since they tended to be very squeamish about holding hands. When it came to the twirl, I had to have the students hold hands, as otherwise, the double twirl doesn't quite work. The students seemed to get the dance after a few repetitions. The twirl ending was something that I wanted the students to add when I gave a particular hand signal (hand way up in the air), and so the students had to wait for it. Also adding to the fun - I had the students walk in the opposite direction after each iteration so that the students didn't crash into one side of the room. I was able to get most of the students into the dance from the first class, and for the second class, we made one massive double line of students spanning the length of the gym. Most students in the dance were able to do the twirl so long as the twirl was facing the original direction of motion, but if the twirl was towards the opposite direction, a lot of the students got tripped up. I had a chance to talk about why the twirl worked better in a certain direction with the second class, and it was a pretty good talk. | |
| Epo I Tai Tai E | Try it a few times and see if the students can figure out the pattern |
| This is always a fun exercise, and it took an unexpectedly higher number of iterations before students really caught on. I had to give hints about how the last measure of the song was already determined by the earlier parts. Once the students figured out the pattern, I switched the motions on them, and even then it took a few iterations before the students could figure out the next version. | |
I was pretty happy with this second stint in the gym, and perhaps I can squeeze in one last class in the gym. I did want to try Thady You Gander and the Irish Jig once again, not to mention How Do You Dootee.
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