Cultural Literacy: Who am I?

Cultural Literacy: 
Who am I?

By Mara Sherwood

Title of lesson: Who Am I? Exploring your cultural identity through creative movement.

Age Group: 6^th-12^th Grade. Difficulty of lesson can be adapted for specific age group.

Materials needed:  music and player, Laban posters, white board and paper for recording class notes and discussions. Videos of different dance forms, and handout with guidelines on how to research their dances by interviewing family members and exploring the internet.

Learner Objectives:

-       Students will learn about dances that are unique to their particular culture, background or neighborhood

-       Students will generate a list of Laban qualities based on their particular dance form

-       Students will create an original movement sequence based on their specific dance form incorporating Laban effort qualities

Warm up: (10minutes) Students will be lead through a comprehensive set warm-up that incorporates some of the Laban effort factors such as weight, space, and time.

Presentation of Theme: (5 minutes)

            -   Interview family members. Research on the internet the history and context of dances inherent to your culture. How can you incorporate original movement ideas with these existing dance forms.

Group Activity: (15 minutes)

-       Students will choreograph original movement phrases based on dances from their culture combined with Laban effort qualities including; timing, space and weight.

-       They then can select music that corresponds with the “feeling” f their dance.

Sharing: (10 minutes)

-       The class can be divided into partners and they can then take turns sharing their dances with each other.

-       They can then discuss with each other what they observed in their dances including specific elements of the Laban qualities and movements that were particular to original dance style.

Poster Sample:

Here is some of the information that would be included on the posters that are in the classroom:

Space:

-       Kinesphere: Small, Medium, or Large

-        Pathways in Kinesphere: Central, peripheral, or Transverse

-         Spatial Level: Low, Middle, High

-         Spatial Pathways: Straight, Curving, Zigzag, circular (clockwise or counterclockwise)

Effort:

-       Effort factors (attitudes): Weight, space, time, flow

-        Action drive: Float, punch, glide, slash, dab wring, flick, press.



Back to Cultural Diversity