Early development

Performance: Dance

Creative arts

﻿These are the things that you and your learning partner need to remember for every lesson that we do. You need to be ready to learn. Your learning partner will know how to help you and when you're ready. They'll know in what position, where, and what time you learn best. When your learning isn't engaging, it's okay to stop. They'll also know what things are safe for you to do, especially when you taste, touch, and explore, particularly if you've got allergies or other medical conditions. You will do things for yourself as much as possible, finding things, discovering, exploring, and making your own sounds or movements, no matter how small. You should control things as much as possible. Independent discovery is the key to your learning and for you to make great progress. Whenever you've exploring, it's good for the person working with you to stop, wait, and see if you'd like to do something again or if you want more of something. You might have a way of doing this that's clear already, or you might just be starting to do that. You'll need time. You might take a long time over this lesson or a short time. It depends what you think to what we're exploring or how you're feeling. You can repeat this lesson as many times as you like. The person working with you might need to wait quietly for you to work out what it is that you want to do. People sometimes call this processing time, because I know that your body doesn't do what you want it to do straight away. I might use lots of words at the start of a lesson so that you and your learning partner know what it is that you're going to do, what it is that you need to get ready. But when you're learning together, they'll always be really clear in their language because you're just starting to know what words mean. If you've got a communication book or a device, the person working with you will help you practise using really helpful words, like more and stop. Words like this are core words, and they're really useful for you to exert control. To help you understand new words, a person working with you can model these on your communication device or communication book if you've got one. You might just be starting to notice things using your senses. The person working with you will know how you do this and when you're doing something new or something really amazing. Sometimes we'll do things that you like, and sometimes we'll do things that you don't like. That's okay, it's your chance to say stop or "I don't like it" in whatever way you can. If it upsets you or it isn't safe, it's really important to stop. If you belong to a school, I'm sure your teacher would love to hear about any brilliant work that you do during our Oak sessions. Hello, my name's Kate, and it's time for our performance session. And today, we're thinking about dance. All the things that you and the person that you're working with need to get ready are on the next slide. So when you get there, pause and get all your things ready to do your work. In a moment, pause this video and gather your resources together for our learning today. Things that you will need. A piece of velvet or some light, soft fabric. Just a small amount would be great. Hula music. An adult can help you find this. Please also enjoy the hula dance and singing on our worksheet link. A switch that you can record onto, if you have one. An ocean drum or rainmaker. Sea sounds, a wind machine, or a fan. Real sand, if you have it, or you can also make sand, like I do, out of cereal. This is a little bit safer if you like exploring things with your mouth. A light green or blue fabric if you have it or any light fabric would be great. Once you have everything ready, restart this video. First of all, you need to get ready to learn, and this is what you'll need. You'll need some music to help you remember this session. You can choose what this is. A piece of velvet or soft, light fabric, just a small amount. You'll also need the support or activities that help you and your body to get ready to learn. To help you remember that it's time for dance, I'd like you to see if you can find a piece of light fabric. I've managed to find this one. I've cut a piece off, and it's a nice, bright orange colour too. Can you remember with our drama object, we decided to spray it with some really special perfume because if you were going out to a performance, you might wear your best aftershave or perfume. So I'm going to spray this fabric with my favourite perfume. What I'd like you to do, and the reason I thought this was a good piece of fabric is that it's like a dance scarf. So you could, or the person working with you could, throw it up in the air and watch it fall. Or you could wave it round like a dancer. So to tell us that it's time for dance, what we're going to say, or what we're going to do, is say, it's time for dance. It's time for dance. Let's get ready. Let's get ready. It's time for dance. It's time for dance. Let's get ready. Let's get ready. So, I know as well that you need to remember what it is that we're doing, but you also might need to get your body ready to dance. And this is especially important if you're going to use your body. We're going to use arms and hands today, so make sure that your arms are stretched out and ready and that your hands and your fingers are stretched out ready. There might be other things that you need to do to make sure that you're ready to do your best work. So you might want to think about a calm piece of music to help you get ready. So pause at the next slide and get ready to do your work. Pause the video now to look at the worksheet that we prepared for you. On this worksheet, there's a video of some hula noha dancing. Hula noha dancing is a special kind of seated hula dancing, which you might be able to do more easily. To watch this before continuing with the lesson, pause the video now and go to the worksheet on the next page. I really hope that you enjoy this and that you can take some inspiration from this hula noha dancing. Once you've finished, resume the video. For our holiday destination, we're thinking about Hawaii, which is a wonderful island in the middle of the sea. Now, they have a dance called a hula dance, and all their dances recall and help them remember and reflect all the things around the island, so the sea, the beautiful palm trees that go waft from side to side in the breeze, the beautiful soft sand, and the fish that swim in the sea. So the first part of the dance that we're going to do, we're going to be thinking about the sea. What I'd like you to do, either in your chair or on a chair or someone comfortable that you can sit down, is think of the push and the pull of the sea. So the person you're working with can hold your hands or push on your hands. So you're going to think of push and a pull, push and a pull, a push and a pull, just like the sea as it comes in and goes back out again. You might want to listen to the sound of the sea. You might have something that you've recorded, or I've got this instrument called an ocean drum, and it can make the sound of the sea. Would you like to hear it? You might want to use a piece of fabric, a piece of light fabric that can move up and down, just like the sea. I've got a piece here. It's orange. It's not blue, but it would be better if it was blue or a green colour to make you think of the sea. But I can show you what you can do. You can hold it with the person that you're working with, or you might want to have it above your head and you can feel it go up and down, up and down, up and down, just like that. So pause at this slide and you can do your ocean hula dance for as long as you like. Pause the video now whilst you take some time to do your sea hula dance and feel the push and pull and ebb and flow of the ocean. Once you're finished, resume the video. Something else that you might want to think of in your Hawaiian hula dance is the beautiful soft sand that's on the beaches there. Now, you might have some sand at home. I've made some sand from some breakfast cereal 'cause I didn't have any play sand at home. And the dance that you could do, you could move your hands over the soft sand. You could hold your hand up and feel the sand, feel the soft sand trickle through your fingers. So you could lift your hand up and feel the soft sand fall through your fingers, just like that. So at the next slide, pause and see if you can explore and see what movements and dance you can create in the sand. Pause the video now whilst you take your time to do your sand hula dance and feel the sand move through your fingers and stretch your hands out to explore this too. Resume the video once you're finished. In hula dancing, the movement of the palm trees that grow all over the island is really important. So the palm trees sway in the breeze from side to side, side to side. So I'd like to see if either you can do this movement yourself. You might need a little bit of help to stretch your arms up and move from side to side. You might be able to roll on the floor from side to side. You might need lots of help with this movement, but we're going to keep those words really simple. We're going to talk about moving from side to side. And it's great if you listen to some hula music whilst you're doing this to help you think of this movement, because it's quite slow music, even. So when you're ready, pause at the next slide and do your palm tree dancing. Pause the video now whilst you take time to do your palm tree hula dance and feel yourself moving in the ocean breeze, just like a palm tree. If you'd like to make it feel even more authentic, you could make a fan or put a wind machine on to feel the ocean breeze whilst you dance like a palm tree. When you've finished your work, start the video again. Great work today, everyone. I hope you really enjoyed thinking about travelling to Hawaii, thinking about the sea, thinking about the palm trees moving in the breeze, thinking about the beautiful, soft sand as it falls through your fingers. You can do this lesson as many times as you like. Have a think about and find some Hawaiian music or some hula music that you'd really like to dance to. So we've finished our lesson for today. Great work, everybody. Bye. See you soon. Share your work with Oak National. If you'd like to, please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak, and share with your teacher at your school.

Performance: Dance

Performance: Dance

These resources will be removed by the end of the Spring Term 2026.

Lesson slides

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Key learning points

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Lesson video

Worksheet