KEY INFORMATION

Recommended age group: 5–11
Time required: two to three 45–60 minutes sessions
Equipment: Celebrating Rio assembly, examples of Brazilian music (such as Samba).


ACTIVITY IDEA

  1. You could show the assembly slides as a whole class stimulus and/or use ‘What makes an effective team?’ activity sheet template to set up the teams for the task.
  2. All teams then research the Rio 2016 Games, especially the Olympic and Paralympic sports that were played and suitable Brazilian music. Please use the useful links below for further support.
  3. They discuss and decide how to use some of these sports as a basis for dance or fitness moves (running, throwing, jumping, rowing, wheeling movements, etc) and begin to put together moves in a sequence to their chosen music.
  4. They work with the Olympic and Paralympic Values words and decide how to interpret them through music and movement. (The Olympic Values are friendship, respect and excellence. The Paralympic Values are determination, inspiration, courage and equality.)
  5. They plan and rehearse how much material (number of moves and sequences) to include within the time limit and who will do what, e.g. find the music, choreograph the sequences, record their progress on the ‘Dance yourself fit with Rio’ activity sheet provided, manage rehearsal times and so on.
  6. All teams perform their final pieces to the rest of the class during the last session. Analysing what is effective and what doesn’t work so well is a key part of the task, and so the students who are watching should comment constructively on what they thought was good about the performance of others and offer suggestions for improvements or changes where appropriate.

DIFFERENTIATION

  • Younger or less able students will need more teacher input for all stages of the process. For these students you may wish to give them five or six moves or basic ideas to work around, e.g. based on the movements involved in some of the Olympic or Paralympic sports you could ask them to include running, jumping, throwing or rowing type movements, or spinning movements as an emblem for wheelchair racing. You could also work with them to interpret the Values through movements, such as hand shaking to portray friendship, circular movements for equality and hard, firm stamping type movements for determination.
  • Older or more able students will be able to research, plan, interpret and organise their own performance with minimum teacher input. These students may also decide to take on project team roles and responsibilities such as researcher, creative designer (e.g. looking at colours inspired by the Rio brand and Brazil culture, suggesting shapes and types of movements), choreographer and performance director (responsible for time keeping and pulling the short performance together).

EXTENSION

  • Students could put on their polished performance for a wider audience, e.g. a Year assembly or as part of a sports festival or other special event. One or more of the teams could teach their routine to another group in the class, a younger class or use it to lead a warm-up at the beginning of the next block of PE lessons.