Mannequin Challenge Arts Integration Style
2 Min Read • Arts Integration
Mannequin Challenge Arts Integration is all the rage nowadays and is taking the internet by storm. Bring this pop culture phenomenon into your classroom with an arts integration twist.
For those who are unfamiliar with the Mannequin Challenge, here is some context. The Mannequin Challenge is a viral internet video trend that captures a room of people frozen like mannequins and put to music.
Looking for an example? Check out Michelle Obama and the Cleveland Cavaliers HERE.
How to Produce a Mannequin Challenge Arts Integration Style
Create a Mannequin Challenge Arts Integration video with your students! This challenge integrates art, movement, expression, and technology in a seamless way that will excite your students and solidify classroom content! Students can design costumes, props, and sets. Using iPads, cell phones, and computers, your classes can be responsible for production, filming, editing, and selecting the music for the video. They can create everything from the title to the credits. This can be done using iMovie or Animoto, along with many other available video editing options. For more information, check out the, “Why I Heart iMovie,” EducationCloset post HERE.
Tip: I would recommend grouping students and selecting jobs and tasks for each individual. The entire group can make editing and production choices, but it would be helpful to have specific job titles like artistic director, camera operator, choreographer, and composer.
How Can I Use This In My Classroom?
Here are some ideas of how content areas can use the Mannequin Challenge Arts Integration in the classroom!
ELA/Reading:
- Students can recreate scenes from a book, play, poem, or short story. This can be based on reading material from the class, or it can be generated by the students in a creative writing assignment. For younger students, they might want to create letters with their bodies or use their choreography to depict a sentence. Music can be used to convey a tone or mood for the scene.
Science:
- Students can use the challenge to represent atmospheres or characteristics of different planets, demonstrate simple machines, describe lunar phases, or explain the steps of the Scientific Method.
Math:
- Students can work with the choreographer to represent angles, formulas, geometry, or patterns.
Social Studies:
- Students can recreate a scene from history. For example, the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Costumes and props can be designed with historical details. Civilizations can be represented like Egyptian profiles or the Analects of Confucius. Props, costumes, and music should represent the time period.
Physical Education:
- Movements can be frozen in time like during a heated game of Dodgeball or lifting in the weight room.
