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Transition back from vacation…

April 4th, 2010 · ·····

A good vacation is when you have no one but yourself to manage. It’s been a good vacation!

As I brought up my lesson plan template for planning this coming week’s classes, I realized why the coming weeks (and months) have been looming large in my mind.  Starting Tuesday (tomorrow I’ll be teaching a day of sessions for pre-service teachers at Seattle University), I’ll be planning 8 unique classes every day instead of 5 because every class has to have their own performance piece.  Man, this year’s schedule is a killer!

So far this year my lesson plan template looks like this:

Lesson plan template for 5 plans per day

Classes for kinder/1st, 2nd-3rd, 4th, 5th & Autism

…with 5 discreet classes per day (K-1, 2-3, 4, 5 & autism). But from now on, every class will be working on a unique piece, so I needed to split 3 columns in order to make an 8-plan template.  They’re not all planned yet for Tuesday!

Once I get the pieces started, they’ll each unfold pretty organically, with the next step proceeding from the last step.  So I can look forward to that. But here’s the lesson plan template for Tuesday at this point:

We just have to get started...!

And here’s the performance plan, still evolving — I’ll try a few things with the 2nd graders (B) & see what works best.

There are still some holes, but it's beginning to firm up.

Anyway, vacation’s over so here we go…!

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Check this out: Math Dance

April 2nd, 2010 · ··

The Math Dance website is the place to go for further information on DanceTeacher Magazine‘s K-12 article on the math explorations of Karl Schaffer & Erik Stern (March 2010).  They’ve included some versatile lesson plans related to math, as well as a link to a video of their work.

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Dancing – and constantly growing — with autism

March 31st, 2010 · ····

OK, so today has been my days for multiple appointments: doctors, dentist, Apple one-to-one, exercise, lecture. And in between, in the fractional hours when it’s easier to stop at a cafe than to drive home, I’ve been collecting my thoughts…

Next week I’ll start my 7th month of teaching dance to 16 students with autism, without the help of extra time for planning or professional development. Fortunately, we’ve come a long way, with me grateful for every stray scrap of advice and inspiration that’s come my way.  Thanks especially to a small email network of colleagues who are venturing along the same path, as well as a couple good books (by Temple Grandin & Ellen Notbohm).

I work with two classes of 8 students, one with 1st-3rd graders and the other with kindergarten-1st graders. The two classes are so different ~ the older group having developed some skills in verbal & visual communication, while the younger group are just learning to communicate!

So, where have we gone in our explorations…?  The older group can venture in many directions now, each child in his or her own way.  What keeps us going best is the usual delicate balance between familiar routines, new & exciting props, and gradual challenges.

Explorations that have succeeded and continue to grow include:

  • The BrainDance: First thing each day we progress through the coordination patterns of the BrainDance, often using the prop of the day (foam bats, stretchy bands, body bags).
  • Taking turns: We use short foams bats as clappers and have clapping conversations one-on-one. Depending on the child, I still say “my turn/your turn,” or I ask the child to initiate the conversation, or the child responds to my initiation.  None of the students need an instructional assistant to guide their hands anymore, and one boy is very adept at copying my rhythm. They also take turns on…
  • Following a pathway: They’ve progressed from picking up the plastic marker spots and flapping them against the floor to stepping on or over each spot on the way across the floor. I’ve added hula-hoops-in-stands for crawling through along the way, and lately they’ve been practicing jumping over cardboard boxes (instead of stomping on them).
  • Beach balls: All but two of the kiddos have learned to blow up and deflate their own beach ball – and are motivated to do it even when it’s hard and takes awhile!  Once the beach balls are inflated, we do the BrainDance, a Freeze Dance, solo toss-and-catch, one-on-one toss-and-catch (with me… not with each other so far), solo dribbling with our feet, and toss-through-a-hoop or into-a-bucket.
  • Foam bats: BrainDance, Clapping Conversations (see Taking turns above), rhythmic patterns with music.
  • Body sox:  Boy, are these ever a hit! They’ve all learned to lay them out to insert their feet like a sleeping bag. Using the bags, we’ve explored body parts (feeling them push from inside the bag), levels, shapes, smooth&sharp energy, and stationary/(carefully!) traveling moves. At first, I taught them to keep their head out, but as they’ve grown familiar with the body sox, I let them choose — head in or out.  The kids are even getting used to folding them when we’re done.
  • Hullabaloo: This is an extension of an electronic game one of their teachers had. Instead of the little spot-markers in the game, we use brightly colored plastic circles, and instead of the electronic directions (that are fast and hard-to-understand), I call & demonstrate different ways to travel from one color-spot to another, using whatever concept I’m emphasizing for the day (body parts, locomotor skills, levels, directions, shapes…).
  • Percussion instruments: We practice starting & stopping on cue (stopping is a vague concept for some of them!), beating a match-the-words rhythm (“Pizza, I like pizza, pepperoni pizza, and cheese!” with “shhh” and a “quiet” gesture of a finger to the  lips on pauses between the words), and taking turns playing solos ~~ as well as let-it-rip play-as-you-like intervals.
  • Yoga: Using pictures, we have a progression that starts standing and ends with the “Do Nothing Doll” ~~ with each of them lying down while I circulate to gently lift and shake their relaxed arms as a way of saying goodbye each day.

We all still suffer some from Carter’s screaming tantrums whenever things don’t quite follow his expectations (some weeks it happens every day), or Aldrin’s obsession with aggravating Spencer by touching & poking him.  But each week we work together now I’m delighted to see their improvement – with gratitude for the consistent support of their instructional aids (always with us) and the work of their classroom teacher — it’s great to see them dance & grow!

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Preparation…

March 31st, 2010 ·

Next Monday, the day after spring vacation, we’ll start choreographing & rehearsing pieces for the End-of-Year Performance. So by then, I’ll need a pretty good idea of what everyone’s going to do!

The kids rehearse in two-class groups (~50 kids onstage) because attendance at the evening performance for parents is variable (parents have second jobs or small children at home; their religion disapproves of dancing or performing or both; transportation or language create a barrier…).   Everyone performs during the day, and at night the kiddos who come fill in for everyone.

Considerations abound concerning what everyone will perform:

  • Everyone (360 strong) participates! (with the minor exception of one or two who make the stage a dangerous place for the other kids).
  • No one can have a special part, cause they might not come at night.  Alternately, we can rotate parts frequently, so everyone knows most of the parts.
  • The rehearsal process has to build skills, cause we’ll spend a fair amount of time at it — especially at the primary level!  Thus, kindergarten dances make liberal use of ALL the locomotor & developmental skills!  Or scarf-juggling — great practice!
  • The program needs variety — & a fair representation of the various things we do during the year… skills & technique, cultural dances, curriculum-based dances & a healthy of dose of kid-choreography.
  • The kids usually remember best whatever we do first, so clarity from the start is good!
  • One group has a real mix of abilities & personalities & behavior issues, including 2 of my main-streamed kiddos with autism.  I’m thinking drumming for them, so they all have a place to BE!
  • 5th graders want to feel independent and EMPOWERED!  Whatever we do, they’ve got to own it.

So… it’s all on the back burner this week, but simmering nonetheless…

Planning for rehearsal & performance

what to do, what to do...

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The uncomfortable truths of assessment

March 30th, 2010 ·

Assessment time again. Just finished scoring the dance assessments required for 5th graders in Washington State, and it’s not all good news:

  • 6 out of 44 students didn’t choreograph locomotor (traveling) movements into their dance, despite the instructions. Did they not understand, or were they cowed by being videotaped?
  • 21 out of 44 students (!) didn’t get the idea of a dance in ABA form (most did ABABABAB…). Aarrgghh! ~that had to be my fault!
  • 9 out of 44 performed with sort of diminished energy.

But I guess it’s better to know what’s wrong than assume all’s well — sort of the point of assessing them!

On the positive side:

  • 13 out of 44 totally nailed it — 12 out of 12 points on choreography, performance & response!
  • Another 14 out of 44 only missed one point — 11 out of 12.
  • 91% scored either competent (average score of 3) or proficient (average score of 4).
  • Several dances were fabulous!
  • Of the 4 students that didn’t get an average score of 3 or 4, three of them scored 2.6.
  • The student with the lowest score (2) started class with me only 4 weeks ago, and he’s still shell-shocked at having dance in his curriculum!

So there you go — analyzing data in order to improve instruction.  It’s all the rage now in education! But the insights are hard to ignore.

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Recuperation…

March 29th, 2010 ·

to recover from exhaustion.

Ah, spring vacation.  Many plans, but a week to recover myself!

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Tap Dance in the public schools

March 7th, 2010 · ····

… is hard to do.  No tap dance shoes.  Even if I did have shoes for the kids, no way am I going to let the floor get scuffed up.

Nonetheless, we just finished some tap dancing, and it was successful, thanks to the instructional DVD Rhythm Kidz — Tap Dance in Tennis Shoes with Steve Zee.  This DVD works in all the ways it needs to for public school use:

  • there’s a mix of kids,
  • the steps are manageable,
  • the instruction is clear and quick with repetition,
  • the video shows kids dancing, both in tap shoes and tennis shoes,
  • the costuming is appropriate and non-dorky,
  • each chapter shows a combination, all of which build to a dance.

All of these factors are necessary in order for a DVD to go up in front of my kids, but easily the best point was that they all felt fine about practicing the steps in tennis shoes, since the DVD shows it as an option.  I started every day by leading a warm-up and some tap basics, but the DVD was a great way to let my kids watch someone besides me dance for a change — without the wear-and-tear on my own knees of 4 classes daily!

There are other tap dance DVDs that I’ve looked at, but can’t use in the school setting.  Just a note for anyone who’s thinking of making a DVD for the public school setting, here are some critical issues:

  • don’t dress the boys & girls alike… dance has enough of a gender-specific reputation in the general public without making it hard to tell the boys from the girls, or dressing the boys to look like girls;
  • be sure the adults in the video are dressed for the most conservative viewers… skip the leotards with the high-cut legs & the low-cut necklines if your audience is kids, cause your DVD will be a no-show in certain demographics;
  • gather a really diverse bunch of kids for your DVD — age, gender, and race — so your DVD can be used in all settings and with all kinds of kids!

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Thoughts on sick leave…

February 28th, 2010 ·

It’s a good thing to have it!  In all my years as a private dance educator, contracting to teach dance in preschools, I never had it, so I usually worked through the bad days… no work, no pay. In 7 years, the days I canceled were rare to none.

It’s great to have a day off, but you’re sick.  So much to do, and all you do is huddle in a blanket.

Carefully-planned lessons go totally awry. This week I lost Friday.  3rd-5th graders lost their last day of body percussion (their creative work after the exploration and practice of new techniques). 1st-2nd graders lost 2 continents in our unit on “People dance on 6 continents,” and we didn’t have time to get to the imaginary penguin dance from Antarctica!  Kindergarteners didn’t get to finalize their exploration of the alphabet via straight & curvy pathways. Monday I have all new students, and you can never get back to where you were.

There’s no one who can actually take over. This time, my lessons were so clearly planned, I thought it might be possible, so after calling the sub, I spent my time from 6:30-7:00 am writing plans. After driving my plans and materials to school, however, and writing up minutes for our building leadership team meeting, it was 9:40, 20 minutes short of my first scheduled class, and no sub! I left DVDs for someone to pop in the player and escaped home to my blanket. I’ll find out on Monday how bad it really was — did they find someone to even show the DVDs?

It’s a good thing to have it.  Hopefully, I won’t need it again anytime soon.

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Mark likes dance…

February 7th, 2010 ·

…which is not readily apparent when he’s in dance class. Mark is a kindergartener with autism, in a class of eight non-verbal 5- and 6-year-olds who are also not very responsive to visual cues yet. He rarely follows my lead in dance. When coaxed one-on-one by an instructional assistant, he’ll occasionally try a facsimile of an exercise or dance, but he also spends a fair amount of time examining the metal shelves that hold the CD player and props.

Recently, however, he had a rash on his neck that needed to be checked out.  His teacher and an aid followed him into dance class, peering at his neck as he sat down with us. It was when I wondered out loud whether he should be seen by the nurse that I learned he likes dance.  They couldn’t get him to go to the nurse when the class was headed for dance.

So the nurse came to dance class that day & examined him on the move — sometimes moving with us and sometimes to his own music.  But it’s an amazingly heartening thought — that Mark likes dance!

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Dancing metaphorically…

January 27th, 2010 · ·

Here’s a lovely reflection by a teacher about dancing metaphorically in the classroom.

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