Dance in SchoolsSchoolsByron Primary’s Pirates
This term I’ve been working with Year 1 and 2 at Byron Primary School. Although we’ve been visiting the school for almost 10 years, I’ve never actually taught there myself so it was wonderful to get to know some of the staff and pupils! I hope they haven’t minded too much that we’ve been making a lot of pirate noise in the hall!!
The dancers have had a great time looking at pirate ship pictures and imitating the shapes made by parts of the ship, mast, porthole, sail etc. The register has included an eclectic collection of shapes as they make a shape when I say their name.
After this our warm up involves plates and imitating more parts of the pirate ship, this time with movements! It took a few lessons, but now the dancers are really good at listening out for the tambourine and going to the nearest plate to them.
I think their favourite thing has probably been walking the plank and this is where most of the noisiness has come in! I placed a plank made of magic spots at various distances apart on the floor and, one at a time, they find a way to walk the plank without falling in with the sharks. The past few weeks some have even added a bit of pizzazz to their movements. They were all very supportive of each other, shouting and clapping encouragement to the rhythm of the music!
The dancers helped me choreograph the entire dance this term. Sticking with the theme of pirates, they choreographed some pirate moves, pulled in their row boat, rowed to the island, dug up some treasure and celebrated. There were so many movements chosen for each section and they even thought about the number of times they did them, where they travelled to and if they needed to be still shapes or moving movements. The video is below. I’m sure you’ll agree they did a wonderful job!!
If you can’t load the video below, try visiting our YouTube channel… https://youtu.be/szDAfIE9z20