Monday, May 5, 2014

Smooth Transition Folk Dance Gathering

Date is confirmed.

On Tuesday June 17, grade six students of Hillcrest Elementary School, Dufferin Elementary School and grade six French Immersion students of Sydenham Community School will gather in the large gym of Hillcrest at the start of the school day and do an hour of folk dancing! The objective of the event is to provide opportunity for these to-be-middle-schoolers to meet and interact with each other before they start school together in the fall.

This September, over one hundred 6th graders from 4 different schools will continue their elementary school in the senior section of Hillcrest. In the past few years volunteering at the school, I have observed, and teachers have told me, some of the difficulties these pre-teens are faced with. It takes them a long time to break down walls between them and be able to learn and grow as a group. When I was doing folk dance workshops with grade 7 classes at Hillcrest last fall, the students were very receptive to this group activity, to the teachers' surprise. Each workshop ran for 3 sessions. By the third session, students were mixing with each other. Hence, I started toying with the idea of a folk dance event for grade 6s.

It was not difficult to convince principals and teachers how their students will benefit from the event. In the past couple of months, I did workshops with all the grade 6 classes involved, teaching them the same 4 dances which will serve as ice-breaker at Smooth Transition. The students are also going to learn two or three dances together.

The classes are looking forward to dance together, and so am I!