Jess - Dance

Hi Merian,

Like you, incorporating dance in teaching is a challenge for me. I have never been educated in dance and am not too confident in my own technical dance abilities!

However, after watching Fiona’s (Reilly, 2012) dance videos, I see how simple it can be to deliver a dance lesson that encourages children to learn about their bodies and dance movement that encourages multimodal feeling, thinking and aesthetic understanding (Deans, Meiners, & Young, 2012, p. 129).

I also realised that I already do much of this kind of dance teaching in my preschool! I frequently encourage the children to portray different living things in dance (using a wide range of music).

After watching the videos, I tried to include a greater awareness of the element of dance: using the body (Running, twisting, pointy, curved etc.); space (levels, directions, pathways and size); time; force; and relationships (Deans, Meiners, & Young, 2012, p. 137).

As result, the lesson was much more dynamic and interesting. There was also much more information available to assist with assessment of the children.

Through the videos and observations of my students, I have found that dance provides opportunities for children to express themselves creatively and in ways that are not available to them otherwise.

In primary school, I would incorporate dance in the classroom in much the same way as I do now. I would set aside time specifically for music/dance/drama and design lessons to link with the content currently being explored in other subjects to provide relevance and help them to develop, express and communicate (Cone & Cone, 2005, p. 5) the ideas in these subjects.

Jess.