Year 9

IB MYP Year 9: Health & Physical Education

The girls in 9 Blue and 9 Gold recently completed a five-week practical unit of Hip Hop dance.

For the first two weeks, the students were taught a range of dance moves from an instructor. This was valuble in preparing the students for their group performance. The students were asked to explore the Statement of Inquiry: "Individuals learn to express and communicate through Hip Hop Dance, using aesthetic moves to convey a story."

Throughout the unit, the students considered what constitutes Hip Hop dance, what movement patterns are involved, and how choreography is achieved.

The key concept for the unit was communication. Students explored the global contexts, Personal and Cultural expression, and Identities and relationships.

In accordance with ACARA, the focus area for this unit was rhythmic and expressive movement, and throughout the unit students were given the opportunity to analyse the impact of effort, space, time, objects and people when composing and performing movement sequences (ACPMP103). In addition, students evaluated their own movement compositions, and provided and applied feedback in order to enhance their performance (ACPMP100).

From the Students

For five weeks, our class (9B) participated in a PE unit called Hip Hop Dance. The focus for the unit was the dance style Hip Hop. For the first two weeks of the unit, a former student, Carmel Clemente, who has lots of experience with this style of dance, taught us various moves and how to choreograph a routine. Carmel used master classes and we learnt the importance of working in groups and team work. We have all improved so much from the start of the unit, and now we can use the knowledge and skills learnt to choreograph our own group routines.

We are very grateful to Carmel as she has assisted us throughout the unit. At the end of the unit we performed a Hip Hop dance routine in groups of four. We also selected our own music. After our group performed we wrote a reflection on the performance and how we worked with others during the planning phase.

Alice Lane and Lia Taglienti