Warm Up (5 min)

Repeat After Me

Model: Ask for a volunteer and have them stand.

• Instruct your volunteer to walk around the table (or their chair, or a friend).
• When they finish, instruct them to do it again, using the exact same words you did before.
• When they finish, instruct again.
• Then again.

Prompt: Would it have been easier for me to just ask you to go around the table four times?

Think: What if I wanted you to do it ten times? How would you reword my instructions so that they were more efficient and I didn't have to repeat myself so much? Feel free to write your instructions down on a piece of scrap paper.

Share: Ask a few students to share their instructions with the class, pointing out how each approach has simplified the overall approach to giving instructions.

Main Activity (15 min)

Dance Party

Say: Introduce the main activity by letting the class know that we will be having a dance party. In order to have that party, we'll need to know what all of the steps in the dance are, and how many times we should do them.

Display: Show the Getting Loopy - Worksheet so that all students can see it. Talk through the different sections of the dance as a class. Point out the section that repeats, in particular.

Model: Show the class what the entire dance looks like done at full-speed. Then run through the dance slowly, asking a different student to call out each line of instructions. Next, have the students perform the dance along with you, saying the instructions aloud as they get to each move.

Prompt: Ask students to work with a neighbor to find all of the sections of the dance that repeat.

Share: Ask a few students to share the repeating patterns that they found. As a class, talk through how you might rework the instructions to be even shorter by repeating those patterns.

Finally, help them understand a symbology for capturing these loops on their picture program, since the assessment will utilize this same method. Here is an example:

Assessment (10 min)

Ending with an assessment sheet will help solidify this lesson for your students.

Distribute: Hand out the Getting Loopy - Assessment to each student. Allow students to complete the activity independently after the instructions have been well explained. This should feel familiar, thanks to the previous activities.

Wrap-Up (15 min)

Vocabulary

Display: Present the vocab for this lesson, loop. Ask the class to point out the main loop that was in the dance. Why do you think we call it a loop?

Flash Chat: What did we learn?

• Do you think it is easier to add more pictures to the screen or change the number of times we loop?
  • Would your answer be the same if we wanted to loop 100 times?
• Could we use these same loops with different dance moves?
• Do you know any dances that are done inside a loop?
• What was your favorite part about that activity?

Journaling

Having students write or draw about what they learned, why it’s useful, and how they feel about it can help solidify any knowledge they obtained today and build a review sheet for them to look to in the future.

Journal Prompts:

• What was today’s lesson about?
• How did you feel during today’s lesson?
• Draw a picture of you dancing today. Draw the loops that you did, like clapping three times.
• What else can you use a loop for?

Extended Learning

Use these activities to enhance student learning. They can be used as outside of class activities or other enrichment.

So Moving

• Give the students pictures of actions or dance moves that they can do.
• Have students arrange moves and add loops to choreograph their own dance.
• Share the dances with the rest of the class.

Connect It Back

• Find some YouTube videos of popular dances that repeat themselves.
• Can your class find the loops?
• Try the same thing with songs!