Lesson 2.2: Determining Types of Dance Activities
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Lesson Objective
Participants will...
- Distinguish the different types of dance activities that relate to the four artistic processes
- Determine level of access to space and available class time for their settings
Read
What type of dance activities work best for my classroom? Before we can select content of your interdisciplinary unit, we must determine what type of dance activities we should be considering. To use the four artistic processes from the National Core Arts Standards (NCAS) that we explored in the previous lesson, we can categorize your general options as followed:
- Creating: Activities that provide students the opportunities to choreograph or develop movement based on discipline-specific content
- Performing: Activities that provide students the opportunities to present or practice movement exercises based on discipline-specific content
- Responding: Activities that provide students the opportunities to reflect on discipline-specific content through movement or analyze dance with discipline-specific concepts
- Connecting: Activities that provide students the opportunities to relate elements between dance discipline-specific concepts
Visualize
What about space? As stated in unit 1, access to space does not have to prevent an educator from integrating dance into their curriculum. However, space is naturally an important factor when deciding how dance will look in your classroom. Typically, creating and performing skills will require more space for movement activities. While responding and connecting skills can be weaved into all types of activities: movement, written, discussion, etc. Use the flowchart below to determine what type of dance activities you can begin to imagine for your students based on the amount of open space your students have access to.
How can I gain more access to space if I want it? If you would like to include more movement-based activities into your interdisciplinary unit, but your current classroom does not have sufficient space, you have a few options. First, experiment with rearranging desks and furniture to procure more space in your regular classroom. Second, explore other space options in your school building that are available during your instructional period(s). This may include a gymnasium, auditorium, cafeteria, open classroom, studio space, etc. If you can, reach out to other teachers or staff that may be in charge of these spaces. Also, it may be a good idea to organize your plan in advance to defend your requests. This is why it was important to equip ourselves with the benefits, research, and national standards in previous units.
What about time? Another important factor to consider early on, is how much instructional time you have to devote to this interdisciplinary unit. Based on the deficiency of dance in schools that we discovered in lesson 1.1, we can accept that any inclusion of dance is better than nothing. However, it is up to you to determine if this integration of dance into your content area will occur over an entire unit, a single lesson, or somewhere in between. Just remember to plan accordingly so that students do not feel rushed through activities and assignments. As addressed in the flowchart above, if students have access to space and/or resources at home, then some dance experiences can occur outside of class time. It is important to recognize the strain on some of you due to standardized testing or other expectations. I urge you to keep an open mind moving forward on how dance can actually increase productivity and achievement in other areas.
Poll
Click here to take this poll in Google Form and respond to the question: How much student access to space or instructional time for dance activities have you determined for your setting? -- Indicate what type of dance activities you are considering for the next step.
Your selection will be public to any other participants in this course. Feel free to use the information on the Results Page to consider how your situation and process compares to others.
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