Michelle's Backgound

As a young child Michelle trained at a small ballet school. At eighteen she moved to London to study at the prestigious Royal Academy of Dance, during which time she attained a Bachelor of Arts honours degree in The Art and Teaching of Ballet from Durham University. During her studies Michelle danced to a high level of proficiency gaining one of the Royal Academy of Dance’s highest achievements, ‘Advanced Two Classical Ballet’ along with completing many written assignments in dance related anatomy, child development and psychology and history.  Since graduating Michelle has taught Ballet to a wide variety of age groups, ranging from three to sixty three. She has worked in nursery and pre-school settings, private and public sector schools and establishments, through to pre-vocational and vocational ballet schools, in both Canada and England.

A History Of Physibets

Since the beginning, the idea for the Physibets programmes was to use creative dance and movement as a way of keeping children active and healthy, with the use of phonics providing additional academic benefit. The Physibets programmes tackle two very prolific and high profile issues; childhood obesity and childhood literacy. During the same year (2007) the Department for Education and Skills launched “Letters and Sounds: Principles and Practice of High Quality Phonics”.  Shortly after this publication was published the phonic content in the Physibets programmes was rewritten to support the framework of this national strategic publication.

In January 2008, thanks to the supportive assistance of the Swindon School Sports Partnership the Physibets a-b-c-dabra programme was trialled in six Swindon primary schools. The trials proved so successful that bookings for the a-b-c-dabra programme were taken before the trials were even complete. Since this time more than 50% of primary schools in Swindon have had a trial Physibets lesson, with over 80% of those schools booking a six week session over the last two years.

A New Approach…

More recently, Physibets launched the ‘Phonic Fun’ workshops to replace in-house sessions; the workshops are designed to teach delegates the Physibets programmes combined with independent continual professional development (CPD) dance skills. The CPD dance skills taught during the workshops ensure Physibets is delivered in schools to a high standard by non-dance professionals. The workshops put the delegates in the children’s shoes, so they physically experience the programme sessions with the energy and drive required to later engage their children fully and to ensure the dance and PE experience they deliver is both rigorous and high quality. The CPD also means teachers learn safe effective physical warm ups and learn some basic choreography/ composition skills.

Physibets Workshops - Photos

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The choreographic elements of the workshops are designed to give teachers the tools to develop dance into any area of the curriculum. For example using tools learnt during a ‘Phonic Fun’ Workshop there would be no reason why a teacher could not lead children in a session to develop movements and dances based on a ‘minibeasts’ or ‘journeys’ topic. Teachers also take skills away to develop the Physibets lesson plans for slightly older children and make it relevant to KS1 PE dance, so Physibets sessions can be assessed and used to help children achieve attainment targets.

The Way Forward

Our workshops are gradually being rolled out in a structured way to neighbouring regions during which an organic growth plan has been formulated that allows Physibets to pass on the benefits of our programmes to a larger national and international audience whilst not forgetting to take the very best care of our existing ambassadors.