The Chicken Lifecycle: Armenian Miserlou

For this lesson I really wanted to try to focus on a different style of dance to expose the students to as many kinds as possible. Our last lesson was on the chicken lifecycle and since chickens mostly use their legs as they move I wanted to focus on a dance that mostly used the legs. And then I found the Armenian Miserlou! Below is a video of what the Armenian Miserlou looks like. 

Generally, it’s a very simple dance. But I’ve had to learn that for developing littles who aren’t experienced in dance it isn’t so simple. Teaching this lesson has taught me that I need to relate these random door placements (at least that’s what they seem to them) to something in their world.

For my next lesson, we will work on the memory of this traditional dance by giving them instructions such as “when you place your front foot out think about squishing a bug”. Things like that. I believe this will help them with the memory of the piece, also it will help make more meaning of the dance as well.




Comments

  1. BYU Arts Bridge CoordinatorNovember 6, 2017 at 10:25 AM

    Great work, Lauren! I love reading your reflections on how you can improve each lesson. Such a fun idea to teach a folk dance and integrate it into the core. I typically think of creative dance as an easy way to connect to the curriculum, so I love this idea! Great thoughts on how the dance steps need to connect to something in their world. Dance is unfamiliar to them so giving them imagery and real life references is very beneficial. Nice job!

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  2. UnknownNovember 10, 2017 at 2:17 PM

    The Armenian Miserlou came to mind out of the Chicken Lifecycle, haha! Love it! This really is such a good idea to integrate some folk dance into your classroom. Reading your post gave me some great ideas for my next lesson, so thanks for sharing!

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  3. UnknownNovember 28, 2017 at 3:48 PM

    Love your reflection and how you could integrate imagery to help them better know the steps. I know imagery that relates to something I already know if very helpful and tying it to a movement really does help with memory. Love your application of a different dance style! Great stuff! :)

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