The Casual Dance Teacher's Podcast

Welcome to the Casual Dance Teacher's Podcast. I'm your host, Maia. No matter who, what, or when you teach, I'm here to share all my best tips and tools along with real and practical conversations with fellow dance educators to help you be the very best dance teacher you can be.

Let's talk about it.

Welcome back, everyone. I think you're going to really like this one.

I know based on season one, a lot of you really liked the props and tools episode as well as any of the episodes that I've published, where I talked specifically about games to play in the classroom. And a lot of those in season one were specific to a certain holiday or a certain time of the year situation. So today, because those were so well received, I thought that I would give you just a very, very general dance class games episode.

So we're talking about games for those days when you need a distraction, you need some kind of break, but you don't have time to prep something, you don't have time to bring a into the classroom or you just you weren't prepared, you didn't bring that with you, you don't have any props or tools to use, you need to just do a game on the spot, just with the bodies in the classroom and make it work and make it fun and also make it related to what you're working on. So I have a number of different dance class games that are kind of my go tos. And I thought I'd share them with you.

I'm going to start with games that are more specific to the sort of preschool, kindergarten age younger dancers. And then I will also give you some ideas for those older dancers because I've mentioned before, I believe that games should be used for all ages in the dance classroom, you're never too old to have fun with a game and learn a lot from it as well. So starting off with our preschool age games, all of these that I tend to use in the classroom for younger dancers are really just your general preschool movement games, but I add an element of using dance steps to them.

So this isn't probably anything that's too new or too novel to any of you. But maybe there's one in here that you haven't thought of or haven't used yourself. The first one being red light, green light with red light, green light, not only is that getting them to listen to directions and stop and start quickly, you also could incorporate an element of when red light is called, the dancers have to balance in whatever position they end up in and be frozen.

So this can help with their balance. And of course, I will typically add the rule that we are practicing a specific dance step. So when green light is called, they're not running to me or to whoever is calling out red light, green light, but they are maybe skipping, maybe they are doing a traveling step that we've been practicing a chasse, a bourree, etc.

And typically, keep in mind, not only with red light, green light, but with some of these others that I'll bring up where I use those dance steps for traveling as well. They will often resort to doing the steps very poorly or just running because they're trying so hard to get to the end goal. So I will typically also add a rule that there's some penalty if they're not doing the step correctly within reason, you know, for younger dancers, I'm not being real strict on technique, but I'm making sure that they are at least executing the step to the best of their ability.

Otherwise, there's some kind of penalty. That way we are really working on the dance steps while also getting their bodies moving in a fun way. Another one that my younger dancers really like is what time is it, Mr. Fox, which my students actually taught me.

So in case you're not familiar with it, one person is Mr. Fox or Mrs. Fox, and similar to red light, green light, the whole class will line up farther away from the Fox, and they will call out in unison. What time is it, Mr. Fox? Now, in this example, I am going to be Mr. Fox, the teacher, although you could switch out with different students, or if you have a student helper being the teacher, that would be a great way to maybe get things going while you're taking attendance, for example, if you have a student helper in the room. But whoever the Fox is will call out a number and say, for example, it is four o'clock.

All of the students then take four steps towards the Fox. Now, of course, as a dance class game, we are going to do four dance steps. So any kind of step that you are working on that travels, you will have them do steps in that way.

The counting is really good for them. The traveling is really good for them. But if you're trying to keep it really, really simple, you could even just have them do regular steps, but ask them to move their arms in a certain way with every step or make sure they're stretching their feet with every stab or whatever kind of body awareness things you're working on with your youngest dancers.

Combining that with counting, moving through space, being aware of the other dancers is all going to be really good for their development. Now, depending on how chaotic you want to be, the game typically goes that at some point after the dancers have asked several times, what time is it Mr. Fox, the Fox has given them a time and they take that many steps forward. At some point, randomly, Mr. Fox is going to say, lunchtime, and then it's Mr. Fox's job to chase the students around and tag someone who then becomes a new Fox.

Now, chasing in the dance classroom, and the craziness of this Fox chase going on might get a little too elevated, depending on the group, how many dancers, all of these things. So I wouldn't necessarily say you have to do that. You could just have them count out the time and the first person to get to Mr. Fox wins, or if you cross a certain line, you win, or there's no winners.

And it's just trying to get across the floor doing a traveling step for practice and just adds a fun element to it. If you want to do the chasing again, something like a skip saying that you have to chase with a skip could work. But again, I found with the youngest dancers, if you are yelling out lunchtime, all the kids will scream and they will start running around even if you tell them to do a very specific step.

So it can get a little crazy. So just be prepared for that, however you want to manage it. For some games that are a little bit calmer for this young age group, I love doing Simon Says.

Simon Says is such a great way to get warmed up, make sure that they have their focus fully on you and you're rewarding their attention. So doing that right at the beginning of class is a great way to get the students engaged, especially early on when you are still with the younger dancers, kind of just working on the idea of keeping their attention on the teacher and making sure that they are listening as well as watching. And with younger dancers, I generally will do some kind of circle time during class.

And I like to incorporate Duck, Duck, Goose with circle time. Duck, Duck, Goose can also get a little crazy. So make sure that you are very clear on establishing rules and boundaries for all of these games.

Of course, one thing that I think we might slip into is assuming that all of the students know these games. And so we'll just say, OK, we're going to play Duck, Duck, Goose. Here we go.

And the students might be familiar with it, but there's different contexts in which we play these games. And gym class might look very different from the way that you want them to behave and carry themselves in ballet class, for example. So even if every student in the classroom confirms that they have played Duck, Duck, Goose and are familiar with the rules, I would still go over what are our classroom rules? You know, maximum speed, maximum volume.

How are we making sure that it's equitable and everybody gets a turn and is being seen and participating fully and people aren't just choosing, you know, their friends from outside the classroom, things like that. And then, of course, as we're traveling around the circle, I always make sure that the dancers are doing dance steps for their traveling. Sometimes I will adapt Duck, Duck, Goose to be Duck, Duck, Duck, Duck, Duck, Chasse.

So basically, I'm tasking the dancer that's going around and tapping everybody's head to choose their own traveling step. And instead of saying Goose, they're going to surprise the dancer by calling out the step that they have to do in order to chase them around the circle. That adds a fun element of testing their vocabulary, as well as that spatial awareness traveling in a circle and practicing the steps themselves.

Okay, so I have a couple more ideas that work well for young dancers. But now I'm transitioning into games that I think also work well for older dancers. And when I say older, I'm talking about like, any dancer at this point, elementary, all the way up.

And I'll kind of explain how that works, because obviously, you're not going to lay the game out and play it the same way for an eight year old and an 18 year old. But I still think that these can be successful for really any age. And the first one is freeze dance.

Most of us will start out doing some kind of freeze dance with our youngest dancers, and we play the music and they free dance, and then we stop the music and they freeze. Excellent way again, to get that early kind of creative movement going and make sure that they're listening to the music and stopping and starting movement of the body. But the more advanced your dancers are, the more rules and boundaries you can add to freeze dance and still make it a really successful classroom tool for all ages and levels.

So for example, with students that kind of have that basic creative movement and body awareness down and are ready for the next level, you might challenge them that when the stops, they balance on one leg, or you could say you must have some part of the body, in addition to the leg in contact with the floor. So that's getting them familiar with getting their weight down into the ground and starting to make contact with the floor with more than just their two feet. If you're starting to work on musicality, you can play around with playing different music.

And of course, if the music's faster, have the dancers dance faster, slower, have them dance slower. But what about when the music goes higher in pitch, the dancers have to move their bodies on a high level. But when the music goes lower, they have to move on a low level.

Then the rules are not so concrete, right? It's not like you have to have a hand on the floor when the music stops. You're creating more space for improvisation for the dancers to explore what that feels like on their own bodies and how they can create their own rules and expression within the boundaries you're giving them. So you can play around with all different kinds of music interpretation within freeze dance.

And then I will also add on layers, for example, if I have a group of dancers that are a little bit older, have better spatial awareness and are starting to explore improvisation and creative movement on a higher level. I'll say, okay, you can move freely around the room anywhere you want. But when I change the music, you have to change direction.

And anytime you happen to make eye contact with another dancer, you two have to quickly shift into doing a duet together where you're dancing together. And then break away again, mutually. So again, when I start to add these more ambiguous rules, and then I'm also layering on different kinds of music, and I'm also layering on not just rules that are personal to them of how they interpret things, but how they're interacting with the other dancers and with the space around them.

And then the added element of having to freeze and balance and wait for the music to come back in and then get back into it. Free stance can be taken really all the way up to an advanced level, in my opinion. So that's a fun one that I like to incorporate for all of my classes.

There's also another one that I personally recall when I was in high school, I actually had joined a new studio at that time. And I remember some of my peers in my classes asking our teacher, can we play the puzzle game? We never get to play the puzzle game anymore. And sometimes we did play the puzzle game.

This was in high school. We were all, you know, pretty experienced dancers at that point. But the puzzle game was when the teacher puts on some music, and one dancer will dance out into the center of the room for eight counts.

And then the next dancer has to start on count one and be frozen by count eight and attach themselves in some way to the first dancer. So this, again, goes into that idea of how you interact with the other bodies in space, not just your own. So you're doing an eight count improvisation traveling across the floor, which is valuable in itself.

But then you also have to observe the other dancer and how they positioned themselves in a pose frozen in the center of the floor. And you need to come up with a pose that interact and connects with that. So you're creating this cohesive puzzle kind of ends up looking generally like a tableau.

And you can make some really interesting poses from that. So even if you're working on choreography, and you want to incorporate the puzzle game, it might give you a fun little tableau to start or end a dance or come to this pose in the middle of the dance and then break away from it to continue on. So with younger dancers, you might want to keep it really simple.

You tap them on the head, you tell them to go, you tell them when to freeze, you tell the next dancer to go, and you're letting them pose, you know, any way that they want. As the dancers get older, if you're doing this with high school students that have been dancing for a while, you could use it as musicality practice. So again, if do they have to start every eight counts, or is it every 16 or every four, and you're not prompting them in any way.

So they have to count the music to make sure they're starting on count one, and they have to make sure they hit their pose on the correct count. Otherwise, maybe they're out. And then also, you could change this up to start exploring negative space.

So when I played it at my high school studio, I do believe that typically the rule was you have to be attached in some way to another dancer, whether you're touching their shoulder, or maybe your foot is touching their foot, or you have your back resting on their knee, you know, whatever it is, but you have to be touching in some way. But if you want to start exploring negative space, you could also say you want to create this tableau, but you cannot be touching at all. So you have to move around the previous dancer without making contact and find a way to pose that interacts with the previous dancers pose without actually putting any weight on them.

So lots of different ways that you can play the puzzle game all the way from preschoolers up to high schoolers. And I can testify firsthand that high schoolers do really like this one. At least they did when I was in high school, which was a little while ago, but we won't talk about that.

I'm just gonna go with I think it's good for every age. A final one for older dancers, I would say middle school and up is probably the go to age for this one. And I've kind of alluded to this game on previous episodes.

But as a standalone game, sometimes I think it's really fun to kind of flip the tables on the students and have them correct the teacher. So if we're working on a tricky technical step, or I see that there's a technical element that maybe a large portion of my class is just not quite getting right. And I keep saying it to them individually, but I'm not seeing it click.

So maybe I want to demonstrate it to them and see if they see it on a different body. Will it click for them? Oh, that's what's not quite looking right on me. That's the execution that's not quite working, you know, just observe it from a different angle.

So I will say, okay, time to correct the teacher. And I will demonstrate either the step or the combination that we're doing and have them take turns giving me feedback, telling me what I need to do, depending on your comfort level. And if and how you think this can be done appropriately.

I may also allow the students to give me tactile feedback. So for example, I'll hold my arms in a certain position and say, so when so student, can you come up and please physically adjust my arms into the correct position. Again, you're asking the student to give you tactile feedback, but by them entering the space and feeling your muscular structure, your bone structure, and actually manipulating it into the proper position, something might click for them of how that should actually feel and be positioned on their own bodies.

So I do like to occasionally throw in a little teacher correction time for them and let them play teacher. And for the older students, they tend to really enjoy that. Okay, I know there's a lot more games out there.

If you need more recommendations, go and check out the props and tools episode from season one, as well as some of the other holiday themed episodes from season one, where I share games that are specific to certain holidays or seasons. I will continue to share more as well. So check the show notes.

I will link those episodes there. I'll give you as many resources as I can, but these are the ones where if I have zero preparation, I'm in the middle of class with absolutely nothing in front of me. And I realized we need a game stat, either to lift up the energy of the class or because I'm losing their focus, or I don't know, maybe you just ran out of things to do and you need some filler, whatever it is.

These are my go to games for those situations that require absolutely no prep, no effort, and you can just throw the game out there. And it's always a fun way to kind of pick the class back up. I definitely would love to continue this conversation about classroom games in the Casual Dance Teachers Network on Facebook.

So join me there. Let me know what your go to games are. These are ones, as I said, I've been using for many years, and they're kind of my go to.

So I'm always open to having some fresh input on classroom games that I can use. And you can also reach out to me through the Instagram page, which is the Casual Dance Teachers Podcast on Instagram. Big thanks to GB Mystical for the theme music for today's episode.

And as always, I will leave you with a quote. Today's quote being more about games and play than about dance specifically. But this has been one of my favorites for a long time.

So I wanted to share this with you. "We do not stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing."

Benjamin Franklin.