We were very excited to find out that Halloween landed on one of my normal teaching days! We knew it would be so fun to do a fun Halloween lesson with the students in all of their costumes.
My lesson explored four different creatures of Halloween - a ghost, a skeleton, a werewolf, and a zombie. We started by moving how each creature would move. A ghost moves maybe more slowly and with sustained movement while a skeleton moves percussively and kind of rattles around.
After exploring the movement of each creature, I taught the students a small section of Thriller. Once we learned the dance, we then did Thriller five more times. The first four times was with each of the creatures that we had just explored. We did a final performance where they could perform the Thriller dance but as their own character that they were dressed as. It was a really fun day and I could tell the students had a lot of fun with it.
Before this lesson, I got together with another Arts Bridge Scholar who is with a 5th grade class at the same school, Bonneville Elementary. We decided that we wanted to make some spooky treats for our students, so we did. We used suckers, coffee filters, string, and a sharpie to make some sweet ghosts!
Halloween was such a fun day! It later turned into the energy dance for our final performance.... stay tuned.
Halloween Lesson
Objective: By the end of 35 minutes, the 4th grade students in Ms. Jones’ class will be able to explore and demonstrate different movement qualities by mimicking different Halloween
creatures and using them to dance to Thriller.
Materials:
Music-
Monster Mash by Bobby “Boris” Pickett & The Crypt-Kickers
Ghostbusters by Ray Parker Jr.
Thriller by Michael Jackson
This is Halloween by The Citizens of Halloween
Hungry Like the Wolf by Duran Duran
Speaker
Drum
Setting up Expectations:
New call and respond for Halloween – Full moon! Kids howl like wolves.
Experience and Identify:
Different movement for different types of creatures during Halloween.
Ghost (Ghostbusters)
Light, airy, sustained movement.
Skeleton (This is Halloween)
Percussive, angular, rattles around, kind of limp. (Shaking)
Werewolf (Hungry Like the Wolf)
Quick, stealthy, hunched over shapes.
Zombie (Zombie Jamboree)
Slow, bound, crooked shapes, straight arms.
Teach a small section of Thriller.
Now let’s do Thriller like we’re ghosts, then skeletons, werewolves, and zombies.
Create and Perform:
Split class into whichever creature was their favorite or have them be their own character that they are dressed up as and have them perform Thriller.
Have a dance party!