ANIMAL ADAPTATIONS DANCE

HABITATS & ANIMAL ADAPTATIONS: ANIMAL ADAPTATIONS DANCE

Learning Description

In this lesson, students will demonstrate their understanding of the ways that animals adapt to survive in their environments through choreography and dance performances. Students will evaluate each other’s performances and identify how the dancers/choreographers used levels and locomotor/non-locomotor movements to communicate animal adaptation.

 

Learning Targets

GRADE BAND: 3
CONTENT FOCUS: DANCE & SCIENCE
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"I Can" Statements

“I Can…”

  • I can create movements to demonstrate animal adaptations.
  • I can create choreography using different levels and locomotor and non-locomotor movements.
  • I can use dance to communicate meaning.

Essential Questions

  • How do choreographers use movement to communicate meaning?
  • How do animals adapt to survive in their environments?
  • What environmental factors might affect an animal’s survival?

 

Georgia Standards

Curriculum Standards

S3L1. Obtain, evaluate, and communicate information about the similarities and differences between plants, animals, and habitats found within geographic regions (Blue Ridge Mountains, Piedmont, Coastal Plains, Valley and Ridge, and Appalachian Plateau) of Georgia.

a. Ask questions to differentiate between plants, animals, and habitats found within Georgia’s geographic regions.

b. Construct an explanation of how external features and adaptations (camouflage, hibernation, migration, mimicry) of animals allow them to survive in their habitat.

c. Use evidence to construct an explanation of why some organisms can thrive in one habitat and not in another.

Arts Standards

ESD3.CR.1 Demonstrate an understanding of the choreographic process.

a. Collaborate with others to create and perform movement phrases.

b. Create a sequence of three or more movements utilizing body, space, time, and energy

ESD3.CR2 Demonstrate an understanding of dance as a form of communication.

ESD3.PR.1 Identify and demonstrate movement elements, skills, technique, and terminology in dance.

a. Apply and expand dance terminology to describe and create movement (e.g. levels, pathways, directions, speed, rhythm, energy, qualities, shapes).

b. Combine and execute a wide range of locomotor movements with appropriate energy and coordination (e.g. walk, run, hop, jump, gallop, skip).

 

South Carolina Standards

Curriculum Standards

3-LS4-2. Use evidence to construct an explanation for how the variations in traits among individuals of the same species may provide advantages in surviving and producing offspring.

3-LS4-3. Construct an argument with evidence that in a particular habitat some organisms can thrive, struggle to survive, or fail to survive.

Arts Standards

Anchor Standard 1: I can use movement exploration to discover and create artistic ideas and works.

Anchor Standard 2: I can choreograph a dance.

Anchor Standard 3: I can perform movements using the dance elements

 

Key Vocabulary

Content Vocabulary

  • Adaptation - A change by which an organism becomes better suited to its environment.
  • Mimicry - An adaptation by which an organism copies the physical or vocal characteristics of another.
  • Camouflage - An adaptation by which an organism visually blends into its surroundings by virtue of its shapes, patterns, and coloring.
  • Habitat - The natural home or environment of an animal, plant, or other organism.

Arts Vocabulary

  • Non-locomotor - This refers to a movement that does not travel through space
  • Locomotor - This refers to a movement that travels through space
  • Space - An element of movement involving direction, level, size, focus, and pathway
  • Level - One of the aspects of movement (there are three basic levels in dance: high, middle, and low)
  • Choreography - The art of composing dances and planning and arranging the movements, steps, and patterns of dancers
  • Shape - This refers to an interesting and interrelated arrangement of body parts of one dance; the visual makeup or molding of the body parts of a single dancer; the overall visible appearance of a group of dancers

 

Materials

 

Instructional Design

Opening/Activating Strategy

  • Begin the lesson by playing the “mirror game”. Demonstrate various levels (high, medium, and low) and locomotor and non-locomotor movements (see vocabulary).
    • Students must copy the movements that the teacher makes without speaking.
  • After the game, ask students what they were doing. Explain that this demonstrates mimicry; show pictures to demonstrate mimicry in nature.
    • Discuss the levels that you used and share with students that levels are one of the ways that dancers show the element of space in dance.
    • Discuss how some movements stayed in one place and some movements required students to move from one place to another. Movements in dance in which the dancer does not move to a new location are called non-locomotor movements; movements in which the dancer moves from one location to another are called locomotor movements.

Work Session

  • Review or teach the following vocabulary words with students: Adaptations, mimicry, migration, camouflage, and hibernation.
  • Present the following task to students. Students must create a choreography that demonstrates mimicry, migration, camouflage, and hibernation.
    • Students will come up with a unique movement for each of their words.
    • Their dance must start with a beginning frozen shape, have a middle in which they demonstrate each vocabulary word, and finish in a frozen end shape.
    • Students must demonstrate use of levels and locomotor/non-locomotor movements in their choreography.

Students will have twenty minutes to develop their choreography and rehearse.

Closing Reflection

  • Students will present their choreographies to the audience. Discuss appropriate audience participation and etiquette prior to performances.
  • The audience will guess which movement represented which content vocabulary words based on their body movements throughout the choreography. Encourage students to use the terms “levels” and “locomotor/non-locomotor movements” as they describe the dances.
  • In their STEAM journals, students should explain their process and how they used dance concepts to demonstrate animal adaptations.

 

Assessments

Formative

  • Teacher observation of students’ ability to mirror teacher’s movements in activator
  • Responses to discussion of ways that animals adapt to their environments
  • Demonstration of understanding of levels and locomotor/non-locomotor movements
  • Collaboration with group members to create movements to represent the different ways that animals adapt to their environments

Summative

CHECKLIST for students and teacher:

  • Do I have a beginning, middle, and end to my choreography?
  • Do I have a movement for each vocabulary word (that describes it)?
  • Did I use different levels in my choreography?
  • Did I use locomotor and non-locomotor movements in my choreography?
  • Did everyone participate in the process?

 

Differentiation

Accelerated: 

  • Students will research an animal native to one of the habitats being studied. Students will discover how that animal adapts to its environment and then will choreograph a dance that demonstrates this animal’s adaptation(s).

Remedial:

  • Students will be given a list of the vocabulary words and some movements that may correlate to their definition.
  • Scaffold the lesson by choreographing one vocabulary work together as a class before groups work on their own.
  • Reduce the number of vocabulary words that students will create movements for.

 

 

Credits

U.S. Department of Education- STEM + the Art of Integrated Learning

Ideas contributed by: SAIL Grant Teacher Leaders

*This integrated lesson provides differentiated ideas and activities for educators that are aligned to a sampling of standards. Standards referenced at the time of publishing may differ based on each state’s adoption of new standards.

Revised and copyright:  June 2025 @ ArtsNOW

 

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