Embodied Thinking

 The idea of Embodied Thinking is an interesting one. When I looked at it through the lens of good versus evil, the first thing that came to mind was interpretive dancing. I was a dancer for fourteen years, and in that time, I learned to think and feel with my body. I originally tried to find the video of one of my students doing an interpretive dance of the internal battle that Hamlet encounters throughout the story, but it was not to be. So instead, I had some of my students show me an idea - good or evil - with their body. 
Embodied thinking can be used to portray different elements in a new way - there is Einsteins experiment with the photon, and Mozart's body thinking. When I think of Einstein's idea, I think of the many books I read as a kid, and the episodes I saw of The Magic School Bus. That entire series teaches kids to look at their world from a different perspective, and to think small. It is a great tool, however difficult it may seem at first.
I could use this idea in my classroom when teaching many different concepts. They may have to give a presentation of a scene using no words, in drama there are many activities that require this idea. For the main idea I have chosen, good versus evil, they could present a battle using music, but no words and give us a visual representation of the text.

So this is what they came up with, and as it turned out, being evil was far more fun apparently. I had to ask them to come up with some nice things to take pictures of. In the good scenes they helped each other up, picked up books and helped a friend. In the evil photos - of which I only posted four to try to keep my good versus evil nice and even, they punched, tripped and strangled one another. It is obvious they couldn't keep a straight face.