Sports Dance

This activity allows the children to develop their own sports-themed dance or movement piece. You could use it in a Key Stage 2 dance unit of work, building the children's movement skills, or as a stand alone three or four week activity, if just delivering the lessons focusing on creating a sports-themed dance.  You can teach each lesson as a single lesson or the learning activities can be joined together to perform a whole dance.

You could use the final dance in the opening ceremony of the school’s Olympic and Paralympic Event.

Activities

Lesson 1

Discuss the variety of sports included in the Olympic and Paralympic Games, explaining that these Olympic sports will be the stimulus for their dance and movement work in this activity.

Show the children the Olympic and Paralympic Sports Cards, or pictures of different sports, as a stimulus to give them ideas. Explain that these sports will provide ideas for our movements.

Warm Up

Ask the children to run in and out of each other using all the spaces for a count of 10. On ‘10’, they must ‘freeze’ where they are.  Ask the children ‘How do we freeze our bodies?’ Explain that we ‘stop immediately and tighten all our muscles so we have a ‘strong’ feeling in our bodies’. (The children should tense their muscles.)

Repeat the activity, but shorten the count (‘8’/‘6’/‘4’/‘2’.  By the end of the warm up, the children should have explored the feeling of muscle tension and of ‘freezing’ a movement.

Explain to the children that they are going to create freeze frames in their dance today.

NOTE: To create a freeze frame we use our bodies to make a physical picture to represent an action or a story. The freeze frame should be completely still and held for a given period of time as if the dancer(s) have been frozen in time!

Activity

Encourage each child to choose a sports card and freeze frame in a shape to represent the sport (for example a boxer holding hands in a punching stance). Ask the children to hold the shape for a count of four.

Ask the children to form pairs. They then teach their partners the freeze frame for their sport and hold each freeze frame for a count of four.

Join two pairs of pupils into a group of four. Ask each group to number themselves 1–4. Ask them to begin by crouching down in a tucked shape on the floor. This is the starting position for the dance.

Ask each pupil, in turn, to jump up and hold their freeze frame for a count of four and then freeze in that shape when you call out their number. At the end, all the children should be on their feet and in their freeze frame shapes.

Then each child must teach the other group members their sport’s freeze frame shapes. Then the whole group can perform four freeze frames, representing four different sports at the same time, each held for a count of four. The group must decide the order to perform their freeze frames. The whole group performs these in the same order at the same time. (You can ask the children to repeat the sequence twice to reinforce the learning).

This sequence can become the introduction to the dance.

Dance Structure:

• No 1 jumps up into freeze frame;
• No 2 jumps up into freeze frame;
• No 3 jumps up into freeze frame;
• No 4 jumps up into freeze frame; and then
• the whole group performs four freeze frame shapes, in same order one after the other, holding each for a count of four.

Repeat the dance to a lively piece of music (ask pupils to think of a suitable piece).

Lesson 2

Explain to the children that they are going to use different travelling movements in their dance today and will bring their freeze frames to life. Travelling movements are movements that get us from A to B!

Warm Up

In their individual spaces, ask the children to mark out the first letter of their first name by walking. They should make their letter as big as possible without bumping into each other.

Ask them to choose a different way of travelling on their feet (for example running, side-stepping, galloping, hopping, skipping, turning, spinning) and to mark their letter out again, using this method of travelling.

Use pupil demonstrations to identify and share ideas.

In their individual spaces, ask the children to mark out the first letter of their surname, by using a method of travelling that they haven’t used today. Encourage them to make their letter as big as possible, without bumping into each other. Add the two letters together. (Each child should demonstrate two different ways of travelling during the warm up.)

Activity

Ask the children to freeze in their individual freeze frame shape from Lesson 1. Explain that the task today is to make their freeze frame travel to bring their sport to life, for example the boxer sidesteps while punching in the air or the diver jumps up and, with hands leading, swoops down to the floor, turns as if twisting in the air and stretches back up again.

Form the children into groups of four. Each child must now teach the other group members their travelling phrase. Ask them to perform the phrases in unison, first without music and then to music.

Join the introduction section of the dance together with the travelling sequence.

Dance Structure

Introduction

• No 1 jumps up into freeze frame;
• No 2 jumps up into freeze frame;
• No 3 jumps up into freeze frame;
• No 4 jumps up into freeze frame; then
• the whole group in unison performs four freeze frame shapes, in same order one after the other, holding each for a count of 4;

Travelling Phrases

• the whole group travels in each freeze frame shape for a count of 8.

Choose the optimum group sizes, depending on the ability of the class.

Encourage the children to perform to each other in the class. Organise the class so that half the class performs, while the half observes. Encourage the children's observation skills by setting a task for each pair to complete, for example choose one group to watch and name the sports that their travelling phrases have depicted. Allow thinking and feedback time for each pair after the performance.

Lesson 3

Explain to the children that they are going to use movement to convey emotions in their dance today.

Warm Up
Recap the travelling phrases each child created in the last lesson.  Ask them to perform these as their warm up.

Activity
Celebration! You Have Won A Medal!

Ask the children how we see sports people celebrate when they have just won a medal, scored a goal or won a game. Examples of answers may include:

• jump up and down;
• clap hands; or
• a lap of honour.

In groups of four, ask the children to plan a celebratory jumping sequence for a count of 8. They can use:

• 2-footed jumps;
• 2-1 jumps;
• hops; and
• leaps.

Allow plenty of time for children to practise and refine their movements.

The whole group performs their movement at the same time.

Divide each group into pairs and ask them to plan a celebratory clapping sequence for a count of eight, for example clap two hands against your partners at low, medium and high-level.

In their larger groups, ask the children to plan a celebratory lap of honour for a count of 8, waving at the crowd.

Ask the children to combine these sections together and to perform them one after the other.

Ask the groups to perform to the rest of the class. Organise the class as before so that the children can observe the other groups. Encourage the children to name one aspect of the other groups’ dances that they enjoyed and one part they felt could be improved on (for example timing, use of space, variety of movement). Allow thinking and feedback time for each group after the performance.

Join the sections of the dance together to make one whole dance around the sports theme.

Dance Structure:

• introduction – Freeze Frame (Lesson 1);
• whole group travel in each freeze frame shape for a count of 8;
• celebratory jumping sequence;
• celebratory clapping sequence; and
• celebratory lap of honour sequence.

Practise with music to allow children to move in time to a steady beat.

Lesson 4

Explain to the children that they are going to use movement to explore the final section of their sports dance.

Warm Up
Recap the celebration/clapping/lap of honour phrases each child created in the last lesson.  Ask them to perform these as their warm up.

Activity
Medal Ceremony
Discuss with the children how the medals are awarded at the Olympic and Paralympic Games. The gold, silver and bronze medal winners step onto a podium. The medal winners step forward, another person presents the medal by placing it around the winner’s neck as they bend down.

Encourage each group to decide who will award the medals and who will receive them. Ask them to practise the order of presentation and presenting the medals.

Set the children the task of adding more movement to their medal presentation, by adding some of the travelling movements explored in Lesson 2. For example the medal winner could jump up onto the podium, turn and wave as he/she receives the medal.

Photo Finish
Encourage the children to finish their dance in a group freeze frame, as if for a picture for the newspapers, celebrating their medal win.

Join the sections of the dance from all the lessons together to make one whole dance around the sports theme.