Lesson 8: Final Lesson!
The theme of our last lesson was Fossils.We started with the movement pattern we did the week before to the song called "Fossils" from Carnival of the Animals.
After that we read an article from National Geographic that had to do with the most supported theories of what happened to the Dinosaurs. There are certain vocabulary words that the students are supposed to learn in their science curriculum so I did an activity to draw their attention to those words. I assigned different groups of desks to do sounds in response to specific words. For example, when a group heard the word "extinction" they were supposed to respond "Dun, dun, dun!" Another group would hear "Extraterrestrial" and say "nuh, nuh, nuh, nuh" with the twilight zone melody. If they heard "hypothesis" or "postulate" they were to say "hmmm..." like a doctor considering evidence. Words like "asteroid" or "meteorite" were met with crashing and banging sounds. The list also included: climate, temperature, volcanism, magma, mammals, and so forth. This was a fun way to keep the kids engaged while reading what could be a dense paper, but became informative and easy to understand.
Next we played a game that had to do with rhythm. I related fossils to rhythm, because rhythm is like the backbone of a song. Fossils give a trace of what the living thing used to look like but with out the organs and skin its hard to tell what it was like. Without the melody, instruments, and timbre of music it can be difficult to even identify a song off of rhythm alone. We played a game where they were kind of like "archaeologists" because they had to assess the rhythm and guess what the song is, similar to "name that tune." If they didn't know what it was I would give them little hints like a few notes of melody or sometimes even words. One interesting thing we discovered is that "Happy Birthday" and The Star Spangled Banner start exactly the same way if you take away notes and just tap the rhythm! The one that was easiest for them to identify was "Jingle Bells."
The last activity we did was dance to a song that was about fossils. Before we got started I grabbed a globe and had them gather round. I taught them about the theory of Pangaea, the super continent, and how fossils provide strong evidence for it. I showed them on the globe how they found fossils of dinosaurs that showed no signs of being able to swim that were the same species on different continents. Scientists hypothesize that this is because at one point in history, the continents were all together and they slowly broke and spread a part. At the very end of the dance, we immitated pangaea by all coming together in a big cluster, some of pushing together into "mountains", and then slowly spreading a part until our fingers couldn't hold anymore.
After that, we sat down together and talked about some of our favorite activities during Arts Bridge together.They mentioned lots of different activities they enjoyed like the division game, jump in/jump out, listening to elvis, doing song maps, and singing kumbaya. One student said "Everyone loves arts bridge day. It's always a good day when its arts bridge day." Another said "The activities were fun, but mostly we loved just having you with us." This melted my heart!
The theme of our last lesson was Fossils.We started with the movement pattern we did the week before to the song called "Fossils" from Carnival of the Animals.
After that we read an article from National Geographic that had to do with the most supported theories of what happened to the Dinosaurs. There are certain vocabulary words that the students are supposed to learn in their science curriculum so I did an activity to draw their attention to those words. I assigned different groups of desks to do sounds in response to specific words. For example, when a group heard the word "extinction" they were supposed to respond "Dun, dun, dun!" Another group would hear "Extraterrestrial" and say "nuh, nuh, nuh, nuh" with the twilight zone melody. If they heard "hypothesis" or "postulate" they were to say "hmmm..." like a doctor considering evidence. Words like "asteroid" or "meteorite" were met with crashing and banging sounds. The list also included: climate, temperature, volcanism, magma, mammals, and so forth. This was a fun way to keep the kids engaged while reading what could be a dense paper, but became informative and easy to understand.
Next we played a game that had to do with rhythm. I related fossils to rhythm, because rhythm is like the backbone of a song. Fossils give a trace of what the living thing used to look like but with out the organs and skin its hard to tell what it was like. Without the melody, instruments, and timbre of music it can be difficult to even identify a song off of rhythm alone. We played a game where they were kind of like "archaeologists" because they had to assess the rhythm and guess what the song is, similar to "name that tune." If they didn't know what it was I would give them little hints like a few notes of melody or sometimes even words. One interesting thing we discovered is that "Happy Birthday" and The Star Spangled Banner start exactly the same way if you take away notes and just tap the rhythm! The one that was easiest for them to identify was "Jingle Bells."
The last activity we did was dance to a song that was about fossils. Before we got started I grabbed a globe and had them gather round. I taught them about the theory of Pangaea, the super continent, and how fossils provide strong evidence for it. I showed them on the globe how they found fossils of dinosaurs that showed no signs of being able to swim that were the same species on different continents. Scientists hypothesize that this is because at one point in history, the continents were all together and they slowly broke and spread a part. At the very end of the dance, we immitated pangaea by all coming together in a big cluster, some of pushing together into "mountains", and then slowly spreading a part until our fingers couldn't hold anymore.
After that, we sat down together and talked about some of our favorite activities during Arts Bridge together.They mentioned lots of different activities they enjoyed like the division game, jump in/jump out, listening to elvis, doing song maps, and singing kumbaya. One student said "Everyone loves arts bridge day. It's always a good day when its arts bridge day." Another said "The activities were fun, but mostly we loved just having you with us." This melted my heart!
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