We Are Dancing
A way to explore movement, improvisation, and musicianship!
“We Are Dancing” is one of my students’ favorite activities - and what better way to explore so-mi-la than with an a singing games that gets students moving and improvising!
Where Did It Come From?
In my Kodály courses, we were allowed to put this song in our indexes because it was from the American Folksong Collection, then housed at Holy Names University. It was labeled as a European children’s game by OAKE Lifetime Award-recipient Elizabeth “Betsy” Moll. As I was going deeper into my folksong-researching hyperfocus, I realized I didn’t have to use Google Books for this one - I could contact Betsy Moll herself! I did and I found out that she learned this game from a teacher (whose name escaped her) from New Jersey. With this information, I felt a lot more comfortable customizing this game for my students.
How I Play the Game
Playing this game with the tag version never seemed safe to me, so I never played it that way. Here’s what I do instead:
Someone is the “wolf.” They get to sit in a teacher’s chair next to a karaoke machine while students sing and move “We Are Dancing in the Forest.”
The singing over, the rest of the class either turns in their spot (mildly successful) or sits in their spot (very successful) to ask the wolf this question: “Mr. Wolf, Mr. Wolf, are you there?”
The students have to freeze or sit because they will crowd around the wolf’s personal space and it causes students who dislike public speaking even more stress.
The wolf either chooses a preselected answer or improvises their own.
You have to make it clear that whatever funny thing they say needs to be school appropriate, or the game stops. You generally only need to enforce this one time for it to be effective - I never say something I am not willing to do.
Some teachers have the students sing the song again, but I just have the students ask “Mr. Wolf, Mr. Wolf, are you there?” two more times. The third time, the wolf says “Yes, and I am looking for the person who is frozen!”
The wolf then gets to walk through the students and see who is the most frozen. The wolf has permission to make funny faces to try to make students laugh.
The wolf chooses a new wolf, and the game begins again.
Students will play this game for as long as you let them, but frustration at students always picking their “friends” can absolutely occur. Here are my variations/extensions:
As more students are chosen, the wolf picks someone to be the wolf and I pick someone to pick a new action word. The Canva has a movement word wall to help students choose.
I add student volunteers to accompany our singing on barred instruments by having them play a bordun (steady beat on do-so) for whatever key we’ve chosen to sing in. These students can then improvise freely while the wolf is walking around, choosing the next wolf.
As students become more experienced, we match the movement qualities of the verb chosen to the barred instrument bordun.
What Else Can We Do?
Well, my students didn’t want to stop playing - and we hadn’t decoded the melody yet - so I made a winter-edition version of the game starring a cute and cuddly Grizzly Bear. Warning: the bear behind #6 might just look kind of like he’s making the 6-7 gesture. I am so sorry.
My students are going to use the visuals to decode the melody and then play it in multiple places on their barred instruments. The joy of Canva is I can teach the students to navigate the pictures and then I can allow them to teach themselves by using their iPads as a display. It makes a more student-centered and student-led classroom, which is one of my goals this year!
Your Weekly Challenge
Take a song and make it seasonal, or take a seasonal song and make it for the whole year round - your choice. My submission is below: “Silent Night, Country Night”
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