This summer, a teen shared ‘I have not been doing enough in my interest of Dance’. On probing further, she shared taking online classes and practicing had become too comfortable for her.
In our heads we rejoiced, ‘Yayy, child is looking for a challenge’. And we got down to identifying how she would like to challenge herself. How she would like to break out of her comfort zone.
We brainstormed some ideas – copying a YouTube tutorial, composing own choreography, teaching someone, doing it as a group and so on. Bang came an idea, let’s mish mash all of it – she had to get a group together to perform in front of an audience and upload it on her YouTube channel.
Just Dance or Thinking Skills?
Now, you would be wondering ‘what’s the big deal in getting a bunch of kids to dance?’ Take a moment to look at through various levels of thinking, it will change the way you look at learning. Famously known as Bloom’s Higher Order Thinking Skills or HOTs.
- Evaluating which song to choose
- Convincing others to join her
- Finding a suitable resource, YT tutorial
- Comprehending the steps
- Breaking down the steps
- Explaining and demonstrating to others
- Analysing and giving feedback to be in sync
- Designing her own steps for some parts
- Choosing a location
- Communicating and gathering an audience
- Memorising the sequence
- Performing live
- Identifying tools to edit
And the list can go on. It is no more just getting a dance video and dancing.
Higher Order Thinking Skills by Benjamin Bloom
Read more on bloom’s higher order thinking skill – https://tips.uark.edu/using-blooms-taxonomy
Now compare this to a typical dance class – where all these skills are applied by the teacher – decide which steps to bring, give feedback to each student, correct other’s steps, think of choreography, and so on. All the thinking skills are used by the teacher, so the question to ask would be ”what do we want?”
This isn’t to say, child doesn’t need classes but how are we expanding our child’s thinking skills beyond just remembering, understanding and applying. How do we get to the higher order thinking skills of ultimately creating. We bring in a host of tools and processes that you can implement with your child at home to expand their higher order thinking skills. Child could be unschooling, homeschooling or even going to school.
Explore Aarohi DEEP – online ongoing support for parents to power their child’s education – https://aarohilife.org/deep