I feel very privileged and honoured to have been invited by Helbling Languages and Unlimited Educational Services to be a speaker at the Çevre College 9th ELT Conference – Dancing with the methods – in Istanbul. This event took place on 23rd February 2013 with over 500 ELT teachers from all over Turkey.
One of the highlights of the day was a performance by a dance academy with a stage full of teachers dancing and singing (in Portuguese!) to Michel Teló’s – Ai, se eu te pego – now a huge international hit!
My interactive session was called – Dance into the light – and demonstrated with practical, hands-on activities how we can support interpersonal relationships, promote self-esteem and confidence, and establish an atmosphere of trust and participation in the classroom. This workshop also demonstrated how we can refine and extend our natural and spontaneous skill of moving in synchrony with others.
One of the key components of self-esteem that can be dealt with in the classroom is having a sense of belonging and knowing that other students accept you. Teachers who promote a sense of belonging create a climate of acceptance, reduce the number of isolated students, develop group identity, promote a feeling of pride in the group and support interpersonal relationships in the class.
Here is one of the activities I used to illustrate this. I first learned this activity many years ago from Jane Revell on an NLP Course, and I have used it very successfully on innumerable occasions with a wide variety of students.
BACK TO BACK
Preparation
Invite everyone to stand up and tell them they’re going to dance. Make it clear that if they just want to stay where they are and gently shuffle their feet, that’s okay. You want people to enjoy this and not to feel uncomfortable or embarrassed! If anyone wants to show off and do a John Travolta Saturday Night Feverperformance, that’s okay too. There’s usually at least one person who does this, by the way!
Instructions
Tell the students that you’re going to play some music and explain the procedure. Choose something that will please everybody and be easy to dance to. My favourite is a medley of 1960s Disco Hits. When the music starts, they dance. After a few moments you pause the music and give a command using the words for two parts of the body. For example:
HAND TO ARM
This means that they should put THEIR HAND on ANOTHER student’s ARM.
Music plays again, dancing continues. Every time you pause the music give a different instruction. For example:
Finger to knee / wrist to elbow / palm to ankle etc.
Alternatively, you can keep the same part of the body. For example:
Back to back / head to head / knee to knee / etc.
You could also invite students to call out the commands.
This activity is excellent for developing bonding and can also be used for learning or revising the words in English for parts of the body.
The attention span of students tends to be quite short, especially for teenagers and the mind appreciates a break. Activities with movement help to get more oxygen to brain, provide productive downtime and are good for a change of pace. Also, all the students always have a good laugh with this particular activity and find they can then concentrate much better afterwards.
If you’d like to find more activities like this, I highly recommend these two books –
Seeds of confidence – by Verónica de Andrés & Jane Arnold – Helbling Languages
Language Hungry– by Tim Murphey – Helbling Languages
Jack Scholes has a first degree in German/Russian from Liverpool University, a Post-Graduate Certificate in Education and EFL from London University, and he is also a Licensed Master Practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming. He has over 40 years experience in ELT and is now a freelance writer, trainer and ELT specialist.
