GAINS Lessons at Spanish Oaks

Melanie Fillmore has been so much fun to have here at our school teaching us about dance.  The students and teachers alike have had a great time!!  Keep on movin'!

Spanish Oaks continues to focus on dance for the year as they participate in the GAINS program (Growing Arts In Nebo Schools).  The amazing teachers at Spanish Oaks Elementary have been working with district dance specialist, Melanie Fillmore, on additional ways to implement dance and movement in the classroom.  You may have seen some fun pictures or videos on individual class websites or social media pages. If not, here is a little bit of what classes have been up to.

1st grade:  Students are unlikely to forget their memorable experience with prepositions as the danced in all kinds of ways with their chairs!  Over, under, around, behind, etc.! (Don’t tell Mrs. Brown!)

2nd grade:  Second graders were “dancing with the stars” as they danced through dot-to dot constellations laid out on the floor.

3rd grade:  As third graders explore cultures and traditions from around the world, they learned a traditional folk dance from Germany titled “D’hammerschmiedsgselln.”  Try pronouncing that with your student (with a little help:  da hammer shmee zellen)!

4th grade:  Fourth graders learned the traditional pioneer folk dance, “Oh Johnny Oh,” and talked about the important role dance played for early pioneer settlers in Utah.  

5th grade:  We made geometry principles jump off the page as we used movement to demonstrate points, rays, line segments, parallel, intersecting, and perpendicular lines.  

6th grade:  Air masses make significant contributions to weather patterns and have a semi-complicated classification system.  Sixth graders used combinations of movement levels and lines to represent the different classification combinations and help understand them better.