DANCE 360: MOVEMENT AND LEARNING (3 cr. UG)

Fall 2009
Instructor: Professor Marcia Ruth Parsons
Course meets 7 Saturdays, 9:00 am - 2:30 pm
(September 5 & 19, October 17 & 24, November 7 & 21, December 5) Location: Mitchell Hall Room 341, UWM
Non-Credit Option: $250*
This course may be taken to fulfill the requirements of your Professional Development Plan if you were certified after August, 2004.

*This is the non-credit fee. If you are a UWM student and would like to take the course for credit, please use PAWS to register online. If you are not a student, but need to receive credit, you must enroll as a special student at: apply.wisconsin.edu

To register, click here to download a registration form. Please fill out and return with payment or call the Peck School of the Arts Box Office at (414) 229-4308.

Course Rationale
Brain research over the past decade has produced profound insights into the role movement and feeling contribute to thinking and learning. The case is that human beings do not even succeed in laying down the neural pathways necessary for thinking and learning to occur if movement activity during infancy, childhood and the teenage years is substantially restricted.

One only needs to consider the lifestyle of school age children/young adults then, in the face of the research findings, to gain understanding of the pervasive failure to learn. Movement has gradually and systematically been removed from the lifestyle of America's young; nobody walks to school any longer, they are bused; two recess periods a day have in many cases been reduced to one, or else eliminated entirely from the school day; the number of physical education classes has been reduced; and too many young people are babysat in front of a TV after school and on weekends because it is increasingly unsafe to play in some neighborhoods unattended by an adult - most of whom are at work.

But young bodies require movement and interaction with the environment to lay the psychophysical foundations for learning. Of course, it is true that poor diet, lead paint, and emotionally dysfunctional home lives also play a role for some/many children. But schools and teachers have little power over those matters. However, schools and teachers do have considerable power to integrate organized and researched movement activities into their classroom curricula so that students can learn across the entire academic spectrum. Teachers can therefore provide the kind of movement that supports learning in the classroom.

Activities To Be Included

• Teachers will learn to do/demonstrate many movement sequences which are designed to activate the brain for a full spectrum of learning activities (reading comprehension, math comprehension, writing fluency, listening comprehension, etc.)
• Teachers will read/discuss short articles about the role played by water, sleep, movement, and a good diet in learning. These articles are suitable as hand-outs to both students and also their parents in order to enlist cooperation in behaviors which support learning.
• Teachers will learn observation skills for judging when the class needs to shift activity for learning to occur
• Teachers will learn to document their observations of results of using new movement activities on their own students, so they can demonstrate student growth both quantitatively and also anecdotally. Format for journaling/documenting will be provided.

Marcia Parsons wrote the syllabus for and has taught the Movement and Learning course at UWM for the past six years. She is the recipient of grants from UWM's Cultures and Communities Program, and from the Helen Bader Foundation for the purpose of embedding the movement sequences taught in the course into two MPS school sites, with very positiev outcomes at both sites.

Bibliography/References
Chris Breuer and Don Campbell, Rhythms of Learning, Creative Tools for Developing Lifelong Skills
Antonio Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens
Howard Gardner, The Arts and Human Development
Anne Green Gilbert, Creative Dance for All Ages
Carla Hannaford, Smart Moves
Linda Hartley, Wisdom of the Body Moving
Eric Jensen, Learning With the Body in Mind
David Kolb, Experiential Learning, Experience as Source of Learning and Development
Andrea Olsen, Bodystories
Joseph Chilton Pearce, Evolution's End, Claiming the Potential of Our Intelligence
Louise Steinman, The Knowing Body
Mabel Ellsworth Todd, The Thinking Body
John J. Ratey, A User's Guide To The Brain

Further Information:
Marcia Parsons
marciap@uwm.edu