Dance and Science

For me, Science is one of those subjects that I did not like when I was in school, but I have seen many engaging instructional strategies and methods to make this subject more enjoyable. Dance is a great strategy to get students engaged and involved in their learning.

The Elements of Dance (body, space, time, energy, and relationship) can all be related to Science. By just looking at the vocabulary, you can notice that the words are related to both the Science and Dance curriculums.

To get students moving and into the right mindset for dance, Action Pak Resource has cards that are an excellent resource for students to use. These cards have action words and use word art to illustrate the action. This helps students incorporate the elements of dance and allows students to experiment, and link action words to develop a dance vocabulary.

Woolley, E. © 2017

These cards work well with the Science curriculum because the vocabulary is linked. For example, words like "freeze, expand, and shrink" can be used to represent something like the water cycle, or states of matter.

An activity that highlights the use of these cards is to learn/review states of matter and as an extension, the water cycle. Students show how the process works through dance as a confirmation of understanding. You can have students brainstorm which action words are associated with each state of matter, and each process of the water cycle (i.e. expand, melt, etc.). You can assign a state of matter to each group of students (gas, liquid, solid) and they can explain how the particles move for each state of matter through dance. As an extension, assign each group a part of the water cycle (solidification, condensation, melting, evaporation, sublimation) and they can create a dance using the action words to represent the process.

They can explain the choices for their movement to show that they understand the properties of matter. With this type of activity, students should be explaining and experimenting. As a teacher, you should not be overly concerned with the final product (the dance), because the process is the most important part, as it shows their thinking, communication, and understanding of the information.