This is the podcast for us dance teachers balancing our teaching job with other jobs, commitments, and just life in general! We don't need to know how to run the whole studio, work with students 20+ hours a week, or win big at competitions; we just want practical advice and real conversations about how to be the best dance teachers we can be with the little time we have with our students. Join Maia on the casual dance teacher's podcast and in the casual dance teacher's network on Facebook.
Good morning, everybody! Welcome back to the Casual Dance Teachers Podcast with your host, Maya, that's me. I'm excited to say good morning because, if you don't know, I usually have to record my podcast in the literal dead of night because my family is awake and makes noise, and I don't want any feedback on my audio today. I had a little bit of time to myself in the actual morning, so you can tell that I'm filled with excitement my voice actually has some energy to it, and I'm really energized by today's topic. It's one of my favorites. Today, we're talking about incorporating tools, props, physical objects into the classroom. To just invigorate the classroom, get students even more excited about the concepts that you're teaching them in any style of dance.
This is a great one for me because I feel like I'm almost like Mary Poppins coming in or I wish I had a Mary Poppins-style bag that fit anything in it. Because I'm coming into the dance studio week after week with these crazy new ideas and props, and hauling things with me from home, and I'm always doing it on zero budget, so with no money, I scrounge stuff up to find fun games and tools and different things to incorporate into the classroom to keep the students engaged, and I'm going to share just A couple of those ideas with you today, let's talk about it. Welcome back, and just to recap, I'm going to be talking today about how to incorporate different props or tools or toys into the classroom to make it more fun and exciting for your students without having to spend any money.
You probably know that there is literally no limit to how many different ideas and props and things that you could incorporate into your classroom, so this is not an exhaustive list by any means. I'm going to try and give you a couple ideas within different age categories, and then I'm going to share just a couple of those ideas with you today, so if You and these also are very broad, I'm not saying by any means you have to cut off using certain ideas for certain ages, but I'm kind of going to go over some of my ideas for the age group three to six years old, then for about seven to eleven year olds, and then ages 12 and up. What do I use for them?
And I'd love to hear your additional ideas and your feedback on my thoughts here on Facebook where we have the casual dance teachers network, that's where we always continue the conversation and keep chatting about it so let's dump more information, more ideas there so this can really balloon into a fabulous network and tool for all of us. To use, but these are just a couple of my ideas. Launching right in with ideas for three to six year olds or right around there, this is probably where we tend to use props and tools the most because there's things like wands and ribbons and scarves that just about every dance teacher, every dance studio has access to for the little ones to play with and dance with.
I love using these and incorporating free dance and creative movement with students in this age group. I also am really lucky my parents actually own a game store so I have a little bit of an upper hand in that I have access to tons of different games, so I can go in and ask Them, hey! Do you have anything new that specifically promotes movement for children? And they've given me lots of great game recommendations so if you have a local game store, check it out and see if there are games that you can get to incorporate into your classroom as just a fun break or reward for your students. I'll give you one example of one that I really love because you actually don't need the physical game to incorporate this.
The game is called Heads Talk, Tails Walk and it comes with two stacks of cards, one stack of cards has pictures of the heads of different animals and the other stack has the corresponding bottom half of the animal, or the tail of the animal, and the idea is you shuffle each deck separately and then flip over two cards at a time so you have the head of one animal and the tail of another, and the students have to go around the circle moving like the tail animal but talking or making the noise of the head animal. So for example you might have the head of a snake and they have to go hiss but the body of an elephant and they have to crawl on all fours and really pound into the ground with their hands and feet.
It's a great movement activity, it's great for getting them warmed up, it's really fun and at the same Time even though this isn't a directly dance-related game, it forces the students to think about two sort of opposing ideas at the same time, which is such a common function of dance that we don't necessarily think about. So in this young age group when they're still developing those really early skills, games like this can truly come in handy. So don't write off a game just because it's not directly movement or dance-based. If you don't want to buy this game, you could easily print off pictures of animals and just have them flip them over into a head's pile and a tail's pile, you could write down the names of animals or draw them.
Yourself or you could find like some cheap plastic toy animals and have them pick from a bucket or a bag or something, like that. Think about how fun that would be for the students to have these little toy animals that they could pull out and then play this game. It's helpful, it's fun, and it's unique. Now, probably just about every dance teacher out there knows that you can play this game and you can play this game and you can play this game and you can play this game and you can play this game and you can play this game. Kids of this age love stickers, and we'll use them to reward students throughout class or at the end of class.
I love using stickers as a prize and also putting them on the floor so that students know maybe where to point their foot or where to place their foot using stickers on the body to remind them of the placement of certain body parts and also using sticker charts which can be really simple like grabbing a piece of paper and just saying once you have six stickers on this piece of paper from doing the step correctly six times you can put them on the floor and then you can put them on the floor and then you can put them on the floor and then you can put them on the floor in a row then you get to play a game or some other kind of incentive a couple years Ago, I created a tool that I've used to kind of replace the sticker charts and I think it's even more effective because it has a big visual impact.
This is so easy to DIY; all you need is a big piece of poster board and a big piece of felt, which you can probably get at the dollar store, so you might have to spend three to five dollars. You can tape or glue or staple the felt over the poster board, and then grab some colored felt pieces, which are also extremely inexpensive. You can cut them out in shapes and basically use them to replace stickers, so the students get to put the felt shapes up on the felt board. As a reward, which they love because again it's big, it's impactful, and it's reusable so it's more sustainable and saves you money in the long run. I also have used colored pieces of felt and cut them out in shapes representing the different formations that students are doing in choreography.
Now for three to six year olds, that's a really advanced skill actually to understand not just where their own body should be in space, which we know for that age group already can be a struggle in itself, but then to understand that where all the bodies are in space represent a shape, that's not going to be easy. But when you use something. That's really simple like this big impactful felt board it helps them to start to kind of understand those concepts so there's many many ways that you can use the felt board to help the students wrap their head around more abstract ideas at this age you might also be introducing stage directions or at least again just spatial awareness in general that's a big one that we got to work on with kids of this age so you could use these same felt pieces you could use stickers you could just use any object that you grab from around the house use those plastic animals we talked about earlier use random blocks or
anything dolls grab. Whatever you can find, place them around the room and then have the students use stage directions to instruct you where to walk around the room to grab the object or you instruct them using stage directions and they can't pick up the object and play with it until they have successfully followed your stage directions. You could do it as a scavenger hunt where items are hidden and they have to find them by you using stage directions letting them know where to look, lots of different ideas you could do using any items that you have lying around, finally at this age this is probably another one that is very universal I know just about every studio that i've ever worked out where they had classes for young students would put a pillow or a blanket or something on the floor and have the students leap over it that is so fun and i love doing that with my students but i find that they will often run or move towards that object with their head down looking directly at it so i like to hang something from the ceiling or high up on the floor and i like to hang something from the ceiling or on the wall that motivates them to look up at the same time that they're jumping over that object on the floor again this can be anything you have lying around or it could be a big Colorful piece of paper or felt cut into a fun shape and let them know to look up at the star, or something like that.
Now, that idea is probably pretty basic for your next age group, up to 7 to 11 year olds, of course I know that there can be a wide range of different technique levels in that age group, but just saying roughly around this age group, let's say they've already had a year or several years of dance training, they might not need to be reminded to look up when they're leaping. But a lot of times that age group for me still struggles with spotting in turns, I do like to still put something up on the wall to help them with spotting. If they need it, and another thing that I like to do which actually doesn't take any objects but just helps with the spotting concept is partner them up with another student around their same height, and if they're not able to do that then they're not able to have one student travel or just do a turn in place spotting the face of the other dancer.
You can make this fun by having their partner make funny faces at them or smile or something like that, and maybe you're going to lose a little bit of form because of the silliness of it, but at this age I think it's really fun to let the students engage with each other give them. Little social breaks and ways to have fun because I don't know about you, but for some reason, for me, the three to six year olds, I'm all in on just having them find that love of dance and that love of movement, and giving them a lot of creative space and not being super super tough on them. And then as soon as they get bumped up to the next level or they they reach that age, even if they're still seven, like that's still a pretty young child.
And as soon as they bump up to that next level, I'm like in drill sergeant mode, and I need to get myself out of that. I'm not saying that I don't incorporate any of these games, but I have to actually physically. Remind myself that I'm not going to be able to do that if I don't find myself to do it otherwise I will just be way too hard on these children that are seven, eight, nine years old so allowing them to partner up and actually have fun with their friends and peers in the classroom is great another thing that they might enjoy that takes pretty much nothing from you other than you have to have a phone or a tablet or a computer which most of us probably do in the classroom already is to show them videos and have them start to get into the very basics of analyzing videos of other dancers one example is I think it was Lady Gaga's Super Bowl half-time show.
I just was watching it and noticed that her backup dancers were doing glissades at one point, like moving across the stage doing glissades. So I found a little one-minute clip that included the glissades and had the students of that age watch it and said, 'Do you see any steps in here that you are doing in your own class?' Then we were able to talk about how glissade is used in a ton of different styles of dance and is really helpful and fun to learn about. So I'm going to show you a little bit of that on an effective when done correctly, speaking of doing a glissade correctly a big factor is accenting when you're up in the air versus Down or any kind of rhythmic or accent practice that you can incorporate with this age group sometimes students in this age group can tend to rush and not really truly listen to the music because they're so focused on just getting the steps, so I like to take a break maybe give them each a shaker or a drumstick, those are things that you can get in bulk pretty inexpensively but if that's still out of your budget you can easily get cardboard boxes, cans from home, buckets that you have lying around, wooden blocks that you can knock together, they make a really nice noise, whatever you have bring them in and give the students some.
Rhythmic practice have them play music to the music so they really get into feeling that and you don't have to constantly just be verbally reminding them to stay on beat. If you have a local music school or a local musician that would be willing to come in for a class, maybe bring some of these tools with them, that might be a really great opportunity for collaboration that would be beneficial to both of you. So look into that option and my final tip for this age: they really love to get into some of these athletic tools like scarves, balance balls, they love turning discs, yoga blocks. I've even brought in a small trampoline. That I just had at home for my son to help them work on really stretching their feet in jumps, they absolutely love that.
But I don't know a whole lot of recreational or casual studios that have a whole fleet of mini trampolines available for their dancers to use. So what do you do if you have a great exercise that you want to work on with the dancers but you don't have enough equipment for every single dancer to do it at the same time? Here's where I start to introduce circuit training, and I use this very sparingly. So I'm not doing circuit training in every single class, I might do one or two units out of the year where circuit training. is part of their warm-up, but the great thing about circuit training for this age group if they can handle it you have to kind of parse out their maturity and whether or not they can handle it, but if they can and you're confident in that then it gives them a little bit more of that social element again where they're grouped up and they're responsible for keeping each other on task I'll typically do four stations, one in each corner of the room and one corner might be just different conditioning exercises, one might be stretching, one might be repeating a couple of the simple warm-up steps that we're working on and then the last one is where i will have the equipment that i have available so for example the therabands or turning discs if i just have a couple of them so the students come over to that station and for a given amount of time they're working directly with me to use these tools they really enjoy that but it also gives them a break in between when they're going through the circuit and everyone gets an opportunity even if i don't have enough for everyone the circuit training is awesome for ages 12 and up as well this is where you should at least be confident that the students can do it and i'll show you how to do it in a minute so let's get started Can handle doing circuit training without you needing to tell them this is what you're supposed to do here, you know, and giving them those reminders. But keep in mind that even your teen students, I don't care how old they are, I don't care how cool they act, they're never too old to play games and just do fun, goofy exercises.
So again, I have to remind myself like I'm not a drill sergeant; they're not just here to run the same steps over and over again or for me to say 'no, that wasn't good enough, do it again' or just work on it and then I'll show you how to do it technique as a casual dance teacher. I think that's one great thing is that I get to help form their love of dance in addition to their dance technique i mean hopefully that's every dance teacher's job but the majority of my students don't have a whole lot on the line when it comes to dance and so it's okay for us to step back and say you know what if the attitude is coming out if the students are getting down on themselves if they're feeling really off and you can just tell that the energy is off and you can just tell that the energy is off and you can just tell that the energy is off throw a really goofy game in there think about what those students would do if you threw that heads talk tails walk game at them and We're like everyone's gonna go around the circle hissing like a snake and jumping up and down like a monkey, I don't know how they would react, but I think that those really silly, funny breaks and letting the dancers know that they don't have to take it too seriously can be really beneficial for these students in the teenage age where they're probably faced with tons and tons of pressure outside of the dance classroom. Going back to the idea of bringing videos into the classroom with this age group, you can start to get into some deeper analysis, so not just recognizing steps but possibly having them even watch videos of themselves.
And give themselves corrections watching professional dance companies. I always love doing that because I'm in a very rural setting and the majority of my students probably haven't seen a lot of professional dance live, so bringing videos in from some of my favorite dance companies and artists, and letting them see what they're doing that's all about and apply technique from the videos into their own dancing is great for them. And while we're doing that, I really like to use props and tools to help the students break out of any creative barriers that they have at this age; they might feel self-conscious or like it's not. About just this is where my arm goes, this is where my leg goes, and this is where you need to start to expand their artistry, and of course again there's so many ways to do that.
I could probably do episode on that, but if I'm looking for physical objects to bring in just to be that added incentive for them, besides just me telling them, 'Hey, you gotta do more with your artistry.' You know that's not going to do anything. So I might just look around the room and have random stuff could be from the lost and found; I grab a water bottle and someone's skirt that they left and an old shoe, and I'll say, 'You need to hold this in your arm for this whole...' Combination helping them to think about what they're doing, and what they're doing, and what they're doing, and what they're doing, and oh my arm actually has to be placed a very certain way in order to hold this or I need to have some tension in my shoulder to hold this up, whereas they might be otherwise dropping the arm.
I might use those tools that I grabbed from around the room as just a sort of creative prompt saying, 'How would you dance if you were wearing this floaty skirt that I found in the lost and found versus just dancing in your leotard and tights? Does that change you do the movement at all? I might write down adjectives. And have them do a combination, but draw an adjective from a hat or from a bag or whatever I have lying around first and see how that changes their performance. Or, I like to do this with all ages not just the oldest ones, any age. I'll come in, I'll write down a bunch of nouns on a piece of paper, rip up the paper, put it in a hat.
Have them draw an object and they have to do dance charades and act it out. This is great around the holidays if I want to do like a winter themed class or I want to do a fall harvest or a Halloween-themed class and I can write down all things that relate to that theme, and they have to pick it out and then use the vocabulary. We're working on in-class but in a way that people can decipher what it is that they're acting out. This older age group has always had a lot of fun when I've brought in even silly games like this, so again don't shy away from that just because you think that the students are older and more mature and therefore might not need it.
So those are the basic ideas that I had jotted down as ways to bring in some outside objects, grab things that you have lying around just to brighten up the classroom, make it more exciting and keep the students guessing. That's what I love about it; they never know what Miss My is going to bring into the classroom. Next, so I got to keep them on their toes, keep them guessing a little bit, so they're not going 'okay we're going to come in today and we're going to do this and we're going to do that same warm-up and then the same across the floor and then the same combinations, you know it's always fresh, it's always new, I'm always keeping them on their toes of what I might grab and hopefully not literally I shouldn't say that because I'll probably get in trouble but throw at them in a metaphorical sense.
What ideas do you guys have for how you can bring props into the classroom to help build up training? Can you join me on Facebook in the Casual Dance group? teachers network and tell me i would love to hear it thank you so much to gb mystical again for writing my theme music and for everyone that has helped me with building the podcast here i was all excited that i was able to record during the day because my family wasn't home and you may have heard a little pitter pattering of my dog in the background i'm very sorry i hope that that didn't come through but let me know i am still as always going to close with a quote and i actually don't have a citation for who this is by but i really like the quote so bear with me here i'm going to close with a quote and i actually don't have a i'm just going To share these words of wisdom, we're fools, whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance.