RESIDENCY GOALS
Dance is the language of movement. It is a language that our students already have a vocabulary for.

Classroom Creative Movement is designed for the limited spatial constraints of the classroom. It can be used to teach content and deepen understanding on any academic subject. This artform is particularly effective at motivating and engaging kinesthetic learners.

Classroom Creative Movement uses the discipline of dance to teach students to focus and increase attention. Students are guided as they explore connections to their body, self space and stillness.  They will be immersed in collaborative and team building activities while developing problem solving and critical thinking skills. Through this program students will gain tools that they can use to prepare themselves to learn.

Examples of Work with Students
While the Vibrant Classroom philosophy is to individually design each residency in collaboration with the schools and teachers, following are some examples of residencies from this past year.

Teaching Mindfulness through Movement
One of Dr. Abramovitz's most requested workshop series this past year combined an introduction to brain anatomy (developmentally appropriate for K-5) with hands on activities for using movement to develop focus in the classroom. Drawing on activities from Brain Gym, Ideokinesis and Dance, Dr. Abramovitz presented a number of techniques to help students increase their attention, listening and comprehension skills. Student sessions were then followed by after school "de-brief" sessions in which  teachers learned how to develop the activities that were modeled earlier in the day.

Safe, Responsible, Respectful - Building School Community with the Movement Arts
This residency was designed for a group of teachers (K-6) who wanted to learn to use the movement arts to improve student motivation and build community at their school. Dr. Abramovitz visited each teacher's classroom once a month for five months modeling classroom movement management and arts integration techniques. After each set of student lessons, Dr. Abramovitz led the teachers in an after-school professional development workshop exploring the movement methods that were used with the students in the classroom. During the interim month between visits, the teachers had the opportunity to design and implement their own classroom movement activities based on the monthly model.

Teaching the Six Writing Traits through Movement
In this residency, Dr. Abramovitz collaborated with a group of third grade teachers to improve their students' skill at rewriting and revision. Prior to Dr. Abramovitz's visit the teachers had each student write a paragraph. Then the students participated in a movement experience devoted to one of the Six Writing Traits. Following the visit, the students rewrote their paragraph with an eye toward the particular writing trait they had just studied. Particular traits that were studied were Ideas and Content, Organization, Voice, and Word Choice.