I recently did mirror motions with a new group of 4th graders to some Japanese Gagaku music and talked how slow is better then we applied this style to a Haiku where we chose poses or motions for a word or small group of words. Poses can be a great entry way to think out of the box and then think how we get to the pose. They seemed very comfortable doing this and enjoyed the process.

Lastly, have movement terms and resources on the walls. If students need ideas, allow them to have a place to look for ideas.

Hi Russell, thank you for your kind words. The top of the triangle is where we record the “most important” movement element. It could be an element that I choose, or the class chooses collectively. This will be the main focus or direction of the movement the children create. All of the groups will have this common element. The bottom sections of the triangle are where the children choose additional elements to make their movement creation interesting and unique. For example, in the Keys of Canterbury lesson all groups have the element “shape” at the top. They begin in groups creating shapes. Each group chooses two more elements; a loco motor element to move from shape to shape, and a second to make the end product more visually interesting. Each group selected different elements for the bottom of the triangle to compliment the focus element of “shape”. Hope this helps.