Elements in Music & Motion

The projects for my large PBL with Music and Media students and cross-curricular connections with Chemistry are finished! I am so excited to unveil the final products!Watch our post-edit trailer for a sneak preview of what you are about to read!

Here is a recap from a previous post with new updates at the end:
I met separately with the Music & Media teacher, Cayla Cardiff, as well as with Chemistry teacher Lisa Ivy, to prepare details for the project and prepared all of the documents and folders needed in Google. Special apps were loaded specifically for this class.

Let me introduce to you: Elements in Music and Motion.

Day 1-Music & Media students and Jazz 4 dancers met on Monday in the dance studio to hear about the big project reveal.

Step 1: Pair 1 Jazz 4 dancer with 2-3 Music & Media students.

Step 2: Use Name Selector to assign each group to a chosen element from the Periodic Table.

Step 3: Have Jazz students access a collaborative folder that they then share with the music students so that they can access on their laptops.
Step 4: Have each Element Group connect to their own folder and a Google Doc that was pre-loaded with the information they needed to gather such as information on atomic mass, electron configuration, electrons, history.

Step 5: Have Jazz students use 3 various Periodic Table apps I had pre-loaded on their iPads and have Music students use their laptops to research the required info on the elements and record on the Doc. Sophmore students help lead the learning from their chemistry classes to teach Freshman and help recall the info for Jr and Sr students.
Step 6: Open a shared board in www.awwapp.com to brainstorm adjectives and other descriptive words in regards to qualities, characteristics of the element.

Step 7: Use the descriptive words to talk about how they see this element being portrayed in music/dance.
Step 8: Use your devices to share ideas in music and dance to determine what movement style and what music qualities you plan to use.

Day 2-

Step 9: Music students use the next few class periods to create a short music piece (1:30min) and share it with the dancers
Step 10: Jazz students use the Periodic Table apps and their Docs to create a Pic Collage regarding information on their element. Sophmore students again help lead the learning from their chemistry class to teach Freshman and help recall the info for Jr and Sr students. This included them asking me Chemistry details that I was not prepared to answer :). The Pic Collage gives all the important details as well as a QR code link to a website for more info.

Day 3 & 4-

Music students continue to work on their music while my dancers use their descriptive words in improvisational explorations on their element to help gather movement ideas for their choreography.
When the music is complete it gets loaded right into the share folder for their element as described above.

Day 5-

Reveal all music to dancers. Those dancers that had multiple songs to listen to will choose the one that best fits their image of the element and their style as a choreographer. They then begin to choreograph and plan costumes to create a final dance project on their element.

Day 6 & 7-

Continue and solidify all choreography. Students can access their music right from their apps. We use small portable speakers to be able to play the music a little louder for each dancer.

Day 8-

Quickly take your spelling test (see previous blog) and then get into costume to warm up and practice for the showing.
Invite Music and Media students and other dance classes back to the dance studio to watch the show.
Revel in the amazing results and the corresponding results!

Day 9-
Wait?! It's not over?

Load dances onto a Youtube link.
Add a QR code to your PicCollage that links to all music created for the project.
Load PicCollage to Thinglink.
Add media link on Thinglink to the YouTube video of your dance.
Use teacher Turn-In Form on iPad to share link to your Thinklink.
Hug a friend...you did it!!

This project will now extend into 2nd semester. Cedar Ridge HS Chemistry classes will be using the music and dance videos and Thinglink to analyze qualities of elements and discuss the similarities between the element and what they see and hear.

I could not be more excited about the results of this project. Below are the links to all of the elements that we used for the project. I guarantee none of us will look at the periodic table the same again. The dancers decided they all have nicknames and call each other my their element :) (missing Radium due to an injured dancer) They can't believe they had to dance so closely in front of their peers, have their work shared on our department social media, or could get so much out of 9 days!

(Here is a video to the dances separate from the Thinglink link)