But the article “Jump Patterns: Percussive Dance and the Path to Math” (TAJ vol. 9, number 2, April-June 2011) provided much more than food for thought. The article unwraps the dance/math residencies Malke Rosenfeld teaches in public schools. The fact that she shares her methodologies with classroom teachers for use in the classroom lit a spark for me. Even without being a step dancer myself, maybe I could lead my dance students through the jump pattern curriculum!

I’m about to begin Week 5 of 6, finishing the jump patterns with my second set of 4th & 5th graders (six lessons per group), and we’re all enjoying it. Malke’s outline provided lots of material to work with, and I’ve worked the pacing & focus of instruction for each lesson to fit my ELL learners & my circumstance. The movement variables are broken into malleable chunks, and we’ve explored the math-related concepts of precision, congruency, reflection, and turn symmetry, with students choreographing patterns in teams of 2 and 3. In addition to integrating dance & math, there’s a problem-solving (choreography) component that parallels the “workshop/conferencing” structure that my students are familiar with through Writers Workshop, allowing me time to confer with & jump-start individual students. In addition, there’s a spatial arrangement that supports classroom management (personal dance spaces for each team — wow, what a concept!). Add in some dance videos to “mentor” the kids in their choreographic process & journaling questions to provide feedback on what students are learning, and it’s no wonder we’re all engaged!

My first groups of 4th & 5th graders finished the unit before the holiday break, with some of them performing their patterns, both congruently & in mirror symmetry. They nailed the precision steps they’d created, even without the support of their personal dance spaces, and their peer audience was able to talk about what they were seeing with insight and new vocabulary. What a pleasure to watch… I’m so grateful to be able to learn from colleagues!

rehearsing for congruency

Practicing 270-degree turns

ALT/space is a project of the Teaching Artist Journal — an arena for Teaching Artists to share stories of their students, moments of learning, questions and obstacles, reflections, and successes. I’m honored to be part of ALT/space, representing dance education in a public school setting and adding my voice among other arts educators and advocates. Thanks to the folks at TAJ for putting it together!

I hope you’ll check it out… perhaps you’ve read my story before on dancepulse, but some of the other voices have blogs too, so do browse!

Every March I have to start pulling together 6 or 7 dances for an end-of-year performance. Every school has its own schedule and rhythm for performance — based on student demographics, the focus of the school, the parent population, logistics, and money — so I operate with some givens:

• Our community — students, parents, staff — prefer one end-of-year performance. During the year, some classes do low-key performances for staff-and-students at Monday morning assemblies, but parents are only invited in June (each of our other community/evening events focuses on a different content area: Curriculum Night, Math Night, Literacy Night, Young Authors Day…). So our end-of-year performance is the one chance to showcase all 380 students as well as what the dance program has to offer — movement skills, cultural dances, curriculum-related choroegraphy, and a lot of creative input, collaboration and ownership from the kids.
• Attendance at evening events is healthy. Healthy means the percentage of kids that attend at night has increased dramatically over the years: at the primary level, it’s gone from 5% to 60%; at the intermediate level, it’s gone from 20% to 90%.
• But it’s also unpredictable: I never know quite which student will or won’t come at night, so I can’t give anyone a starring role. I can’t even do the star-with-understudy thing, cause both star and understudy might both be no-shows!
• The performances need to be no more than 75 minutes long. [We actually have 2 performances -- one in the afternoon, when students perform for each other, so everyone has a chance to perform, and one at night -- when family-and-friends are in the audience.] They need to be short for the sake of the kid-audience in the afternoon, the parents-wh0-want-to-go-home at night, and teachers-who-are-supervising-dancers-back-in-the-classroom while parents fill the audience. So go ahead, do the numbers… each of 14 classes can do a 4-dance, with a 1-minute transition between dances (and I have to come up with structures for 14 different dances!) OR each of 7 grade levels can do an 8 or 10-minute dance. I opt for the latter, so parents can see their own child on stage for more time! But of course, that’s more kids on stage, especially during the afternoon performance: 50-60 at a time, 2 classes per grade level. At night, when some kids don’t come, the numbers onstage are just about right.
• There’s no funding. Our population is low-income, we don’t have parent volunteers, we don’t have a PTA, and our entire school budget goes toward improving academic achievement, because our kids are always just barely making it. That means I use the materials I have. The most I ever do for costumes is to ask the kids to maybe wear a black or colorful t-shirt if they have one.

So in March, I need to think up 7 dance structures for 50 kids each, with each grade-level dance showcasing a different aspect of the dance program and no starring roles. This year, as the task was looming, I got a tip from Krista Carreiro, a hugely ambitious and dedicated performing-arts-specialist colleague who does musicals. I’ve never done a musical.

She suggested the Bad Wolf Press as a great resource.

I was skeptical. “I don’t play piano! How can I accompany them?”

“I don’t either! But with the Bad Wolf Press scripts, you get a CD of the songs — both with and without the voices, so you can practice with the voices & perform the instrumental version.”

Hmmm. I checked out the website. Lots of 30-minute, curriculum-related scripts. Samples of the songs on the website. Affordable!

I chose Character Matters and Pirates from Grammar Island — because we’re always struggling to find more time for social skills instruction, and we have so many English-language-learning kids. And because there’s a discount if you buy two! My principal agreed to the expenditure.

And we launched into a musical adventure… I’ll follow up with more details about how we did it. But for now, suffice it to say, it was a huge success. The kids loved it! The principal & staff were thrilled. Parents were enthusiastic. It lightened my load, and I enjoyed it — and I’ve already got ideas about how to do it better next time!

Check it out — and in the meantime, I’d be happy to hear about the performance paradigm at your school!

On the days when I read my horoscope, my engagement with it lasts all of about 10 seconds, as I cast a thought toward whether it applies to my plan for the day.  Then I forget it.

Today, however, it sort of fits — on 2 counts. First, because writing here is something I do in order to make sense of what I do. And second, because just now I’m in the process of letting go to make space for the new.

Oh, I haven’t actually let go yet — the End-of-Year Performance, which has consumed my time these last few weeks, is still 3 days away. At this point, I’m making the program, arranging the music playlist, creating a backup on my iPod, copying the rehearsal videos onto my hard drive, and writing notes for teachers on how to prepare their class on the day of performance.

But I’m letting go of the kids’ performance. It’s up to them now. Each class has one more rehearsal, with no more changes. Critiques & suggestions have given way to “Have fun!”… “If there’s a problem, improvise!”… “Do your best!” Each class has gone as far as developmentally possible just now…

Kindergarteners… have 2 dances, both based on following musical cues. In the first, set to Pathway Puzzles* by Eric Chappelle, they use scarves for juggling, making curvy pathways & making straight pathways, melting & rising with the musical changes of pitch. In the second, they do The Shoemaker dance, with a different locomotor skill during each traveling interlude (walking, jumping, hopping, galloping, skipping, bear walk, crocodile, frog jump, crab walk, and choice dance). Kindergarteners do this dance every year, so when they start dancing, it’s delightful to see the whole audience of older kids do the gesture part with them from the audience!

This year one of the classes has been HUGELY difficult, so their locomotor skills aren’t at the same level as usual. I’m letting go of that. They’ll enjoy the performance, and next year we’ll continue refining their skills.

First graders… have 2 parts of a dance about weather. First, they sing “Rainbow Round Me” with multi-colored scarves, highlighting the colors for sky (blue), clouds (white) & sun (yellow). Then they put the scarves away & join a 4-person dance group for a very structured improv with 3 cinquains about weather that they wrote as a group:

Sky
Tall empty
Stretching reaching widening
Weather crosses the sky
Blue

Clouds
Puffy wispy
Flying in the sky, bringing storms, flattening out
Clouds make many shapes
Clouds

Sun
Bright hot
Rising shining setting
The sun is a star
Sunshine

There are 32 1st graders in each class & both classes perform at the same time.  Every single one of them has an opportunity to leap through general space, while others stay in place. Some of them skip, hop or run instead — but I’m letting go of that. They do look wildly free, which was the intent of leaping!

Second, third & fourth graders… are triple threats this year.  They’re acting, singing & dancing in a musical from the Bad Wolf Press (more about that in another post) — a first for me!  They’ve learned the words, so I’ve let go of singing every song with them.

The class that combines 20 fifth graders, 14 self-contained special ed students & 2 students from one of our self-contained autism classes… is a production including narrators, boomwhackers, ribbon sticks, an earthquake, a tsunami, 3 long sheets of blue plastic tablecloth, 14 10′ streamers on sticks, a cymbal, and 2 rolling blackboards with a village scene on one side & Namazu the Earthquake Fish on the other (painted by the kids of course). In the past week, we rehearsed it down from 45 minutes in length to 9 minutes (all having to do with having their props in the right place & knowing their cues). It’s a recreation of the book The Magic Fan by Keith Baker, and it could well fall apart if there are too many absences on the night of the performance (which is always an issue with our families who speak another language at home or work several jobs). I’m letting go of how nuts I was to allow their dance to get so complicated!

The other 5th grade group… is doing fine!  Their dance is called Night in the Wax Museum. It includes a rap, a shape museum with role models coming to life to speak about their accomplishments (5th graders did autobiographies of important figures earlier this year) , and a reversal where the 5th graders teach their historical role models how to dance “their way.”  They all succeeded at getting their choreography done! But now I’m going to have to let them go, cause they’re graduating. Most of them have been with me since they were kindergarteners doing The Shoemaker!

Anyway, it’ll all be over within a few days, with graduation & summer vacation following in a few weeks.  Then, judging by how much time has been going into the prep, there’ll be space and time for something new!  And that’s a good thing. Maybe I’ll get a hint from my horoscope about what’s next — or maybe I’ll figure it out by writing down my thoughts.

*The link for Pathway Puzzles takes you to volume II of Music for Creative Dance by Eric Chappelle, which inexplicably doesn’t include Pathway Puzzles, but honest, it’s on the CD!

The Colonial Williamsburg website has a rich resource teacher site.
from Eileen Sheehan, Illinois

“Colonial Singing Games and Dances,” produced by the Williamsburg Foundation, has dances which are notated and easy to follow.
from Elly Porter, Washington, DC

In addition to Colonial Singing Games and Dances and White Mountain Reel [which seems to be out of print], one should know about Chip Hendrickson‘s book, Colonial Social Dancing for Children:
from Jacob Bloom, Massachusetts, a friend of NDEO member Erica Sigal, Massachusetts

Colonial Social Dancing for Children by Charles C. Hendrickson
Contact the Hendrickson group in Connecticut
Also, Williamsburg’s foundation is a wonderful resource.
from Suzanne E. Henneman, Maryland

“Early American Roots,” a CD from the Smithsonian, includes 22 short musical pieces from Colonial America. From Hesperus, a contact address is:  Maggie’s Music, PO Box 490, Shady Side, MD20764, phone 410-867-0642.  The publisher might have information about the dances done to pieces on the recording.
from Rima Faber, Maryland

Colonists would have been Englishmen and Scots primarily. Their dances were likely the dances they brought with them; round dances and country dances would give you a wealth of ideas, using circles, weaving, and partner exchanges. The steps are comprised of slip steps (chasses moving sideways), retire skips (forward or backward), skip change of step (hop step step step) and setting step (usually a pas de basques danced tightly as if doing the “pony” from the 60s). Your courtesies, based on the manners of the time, include bows from the men and “acknowledgements” from the ladies. A simple allemande is also appropriate and can be done in much the same fashion as we saw in the 70s on Soul Train…just far more refined!
A good general reference to have on hand if you are working with dance in the context of social or geographic influences is
Dance A While: Handbook for Folk, Square, Contra and Social Dance
by Jane Harris, Anne Pittman, Marlys Waller, Cathy Dark, 8^th edition published in 2000 by Allyn and Bacon.
from Kathryn Austin, Florida

The Library of Congress and the Smithsonian have tons of online resources.
Try YouTube — look for the NY Baroque Ensemble and/or the Colonial Williamsburg VA dancers.
from Karen Bradley, Washington D.C.

The Library of Congress website may have some video clips of dances from that period. It’s a great site but you’ll have to kind of work your way through it to see if it has anything relevant.  From the site: “To form an idea of the type of dance that was performed during the American colonial period, see the essays on baroque and late eighteenth-century social dance in the special presentation on the history of dance accompanying An American Ballroom Companion: Dance Instruction Manuals, ca. 1490-1920.”
Another nice site:  www.americanrevolution.org/dance.html
The Society of Dance History Scholars has a really nice site as well; check out the “Colonial Dancing Master” in particular.
AND remember the Virginia Reel was supposedly Georgre Washington’s favorite dance.
from Shana Habel, California

For European-based Colonial American Dance I highly recommend the book / CD entitled Chimes of Dunkirk: Great Dances for Children, available from New England Dancing Masters at 41 West Street in Brattleboro, Vermont 05301.
For African American dances of the Colonial period, including Juba and the Ring Shout, I have always reached out to my NYC colleagues who are experts in this area such as Mickey Davidson. There is some excellent footage of early African American dance in the Channel 13 Dancing series, volume 5, ‘New Worlds, New Forms.’
from Sandra Stratton-Gonzalez, New York

The New England Dancing Masters have a wonderful series of line, contra, and square dances that could be pared down to be more authentic for Colonial Dance.  White Mountain Reel also has a collection with 2 pieces that use sparse instrumentation, more authentic to the Colonial period.
from Laurel Lesio-Eisenstadt, New York

**This list is compiled from the NDEO K-12 Special Interest Forum. NDEO (National Dance Education Organization) has a set of email forums for special interest groups within the field, where NDEO members exchange ideas. Folks not belonging to NDEO who are interested in this or any other topic on dance education should consider joining NDEO and the online discussion! Current members can get discounted prices, if they use user name & password, to order resources from the online store.

Books:

• Teaching the 3Rs through Movement Experiences, by Anne Green Gilbert; suggested by Rima Faber
• Teaching Academics through Movement, by Becky Ellis; suggested by Rima Faber
• Interdisciplinary Learning through Dance: 101 Moventures, by Lynette Overby; suggested by Lynette Overby:

Integrated Dance units, suggested by Sandra Stratton-Gonzalez, available online, such as:

• “The Beat of Your Feet on the City Streets: Creating Dances from Poetry,”2nd grade, integrating Dance, English Language Arts, Social Studies
• “Bringing History to Life Through Dance: The Underground Rainroad,” by Ana Nery Fragoso for 5th grade, integrating Dance & Social Studies

Lesson plans from the Kennedy Center’s Artedge:

• Lessons plans integrating Dance, K-4
• Lesson plans integrating Dance, 5-8
• Lessons plans integrating Dance, 9-12

More resources on K-12 integration, from general advocacy to specific ideas, from NDEO’s online store.

Feel free to share more!

*NDEO (National Dance Education Organization) has a set of email forums for special interest groups within the field, where NDEO members exchange ideas. Folks not belonging to NDEO who are interested in this or any other topic on dance education should consider joining NDEO and the online discussion! Current members can get discounted prices, if they use user name & password to order resources from the online store.

“Just wanted to let you know that yesterday in math, [my class] made a bar graph of our favorite school activities.  The winner was dance!  10 kids chose dance. Come see the bar graph.”

…it’d be most appropriate for the 4th & 5th graders… but the boys probably won’t dig the skirt idea too much, so I need a boy-version of swishy clothing, hopefully with one-size-fits-all for both boys & girls.  Then I’ll need 32 of them in order to supply a whole class.  And I’ll need a lesson plan of course, but that’s the easy part…  or better still, a whole unit integrating dance, geographic directions, magnetic north, and play!

Play:  A wonderful book I’m reading:  Research asserts, once again, that dance is beneficial to learning, because it has so many elements of play!

I doubt I’ll find funding for a class-set of North Skirts, but I’ll definitely be carrying the heart of Stuart Brown’s book Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul into my lesson-planning.

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:

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…!