Learnathon 3

The theme of learnathon 3 is dance and movement.  The learnathon project will have two parts.

Exploration 

- Explore different ways to move a doll, puppet, toy, mini world character, robot or screen based character

- Encourage the children to think about different ways of moving and help them understand direction

- Please document the movement through photography, video or animation and upload it to the eTwinning site as the work is in progress*

Creativity

- Children in each class will make up a simple dance knowing that they will be performing it and teaching it to another class at some stage in the future, maybe in their own pre-school or to a partner class or to their families and friends. Perhaps it will be a dance with a robot.

- With teacher guidance the children will create a set of instructions (drawings, transcribed text, photos or video) for a dance

- OptionaI: if feasible, teachers will communicate and arrange a video call or other manageable way of sharing the performance, and the instructions, for the children in the other class to enjoy and try

- Please document the activities (and any further communication and follow-up after the first exchange between the classes, if that is possible), and upload them to the eTwinning site. 

Context:

You may already have a story or theme in your existing planning that can be used as a context (for example winter turns to spring, water, transport and vehicles, animals, machines and robots), and you may wish to discuss this with the other teacher at the start.

You may wish to explore the links with early mathematics (turning, direction, counting steps) and physical exercise (jump, hop, step, skip) and, as always, develop the children’s language (How will you move? Fast or slow - straight or zig-zag - low down, up on tip toes - like a robot or like a mouse?). 

You may also identify other links that allow you to incorporate the project successfully into your planning across the weeks from March to June.

Preparation for the project

To introduce the project, children should be encouraged to explore their own movement to get from one place to another, and to perform an action or sequence of actions for a purpose, including dance or a simple playground game. You may need to help them to break things down into simple parts (decomposition).

They may also make a toy, model or doll move, or a controllable toy or kit of equipment if you have these available. They may explore and then purposefully control on-screen movement in an app or game.

Please remember the computational thinking concepts that were already part of Learnathons 1 and 2, including recognising and making patterns, algorithms (as a set of instructions) and logical thinking. 

Please continue to think about the practices side of the Linda Liukas poster, and build in opportunities for the children to show persistence, to collaborate as well as to be creative.