Fifth Grade Dance Curriculum

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Fifth Grade Dance Curriculum

• Amber Rhyne
• Masters Defense
• May 6, 2009

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Introduction

• The following is a model dance curriculum for a
  one year public school dance education program
  for fifth grade students.
• Purpose To be used as a model for Washington
  County Public Schools.
• The curriculum lessons are designed for an encore
  dance class receiving dance once a week for 50
  minutes.

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Introduction

• This curriculum is also aligned with
• The Maryland Fine Arts Standards in Dance
• The American Association of Physical Education,
  Health, Recreation, and Dance
• National Dance Education Organization
• 5 units of study within the curriculum
• Elements of dance, Multicultural Dance, Balance
  and Acrobatic Dance, Ballet, and Social Dance

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Related Research

• Dance education is vital to a well rounded public
  education system.
• Dance Education is
• Art Appreciation
• Differentiated Instruction/Multiple Intelligences
• Physical Education
• Self-Esteem
• Brain Development
• Academic Achievement

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Related Research Art Appreciation

• The art of emotion and universal expression
• Provides a connection between the audience and
  the artist
• Art Education encourages students to take risks,
  think creatively, and fosters cultural
  understanding, sensitivity, and diversity.

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Related Research Physical Education

• Aerobic dancers showed
• Higher mood benefits
• Decreased BMI
• Decreased heart rate
• Decreased body weight
• Increased positive attitude towards health
• Increased self-esteem and emotional stability

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Related ResearchBrain Development

• The brain learns the fastest between ages 4-12
• Balance, coordination, and muscle movement are
  stored in the cerebellum as well as cognition,
  higher order thinking, emotions, and long-term
  memory.
• The most significant learning happens when the
  brain is learning something with novelty,
  repetition, brain stimulation, or emotional
  connection.

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Related Research Academic Achievement

• Performing arts challenge students to
• use reasoning skills
• Think critically
• Formulate ideas
• Draw conclusions
• Gain ownership of work
• Correlations with movement arts and
• Higher college entrance scores
• Singapore pre-schools descriptive writing
• Balance and motor development and reading skills

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Rationale

• Dance education is a form of personal expression
  and development through active problem-based
  learning.
• This curriculum includes important concepts of
  exploration, dance technique, learning
  appropriate vocabulary, and creating
  choreography.
• Dance education students formulate an image or
  opinion of the world and how the individual
  relates to this world culturally, socially, and
  personally.

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Curriculum Design

• arhyne.wikispaces.com/DNC550-mastersproject
• Scope and Sequence
• Unit Map
• Lesson Plans, activities, assessments

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(No Transcript)
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Unit 1 Elements of Dance and Creative Movement

• Overview
• Exploring dance concepts and the elements of
  dance and creative movement movement, body,
  time, space, force
• Communicating thoughts or ideas through
  choreographic choices by using the elements of
  dance within choreography.
• Enduring idea that dance has meaning.

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Unit 1 Elements of Dance and Creative Movement

• Explore movement vocabulary
• Communicate ideas using force
• Creating aesthetic movements
• Kaleidoscope choreography
• Graphic organizer and videotaping for evaluation

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Unit 2 Elements of Dance and Multicultural Dance

• Overview
• Learning three multicultural dances and comparing
  similarities and differences between their
  elements of dance.
• German Plattle Dance
• Native American Rain Dance
• Highlife Dance from Ghana
• Creating a minimum of five adaptations to one
  dance learned.
• Presenting adaptations to the class through an
  instructional pamphlet, teaching the class,
  performing, or drawing an illustration.

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Unit 3 Balance and Acrobatic Dance

• Overview
• A skill-specific unit that involves balance and
  acrobatic dance strategies.
• Skills
• Weight, weight transfer, balance point, center of
  gravity
• Break dancing
• Yoga
• Rolls, handstands, cartwheels, etc
• Self-Evaluation Checklist

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Unit 4 Ballet

• Overview
• Students will learn basic ballet vocabulary and
  technique.
• Students will memorize ballet movement phrases
• Identify sports movements that best represent
  ballet movements
• Written assessment
• Create ballet stories to perform behind a shadow
  screen

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Ballet in Sports
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Unit 5 Social Dance

• Social dance is any dance where you are dancing
  in a large group, small group, or with a partner.
• Social Dances performed in this unit were square
  dances, Virginia Reel, and ballroom dances
  including Tango, Swing, and Chacha.
• Social Dance Card

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Reflection

• Time is always a factor in a public school with
  school events, testing, etc.
• Opportunities to gain time with students by using
  flexible groupings which allowed for individual
  group conferencing and re-teaching.
• Consider the order of the units within the school
  year. What would the effect be if certain dance
  units were placed elsewhere in the year.

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Reflection

• Scope and Sequence Revisited
• There was a strong emphasis in perceiving and
  responding to dance requiring students to view
  and analyze dance through various media.
• Due to the fact that there is no formal
  performance, standards that addressed performance
  qualities such as projection, execution,
  memorization, and the affects of choreographic
  choices were less represented.

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Everything has rhythm, everything dances Maya
Angelou