It’s the end of the year. Although I’m too busy to be blogging about it, we’re turning a lot of corners! “Can we practice our part of the dance during recess?” Corner turned: kids are taking ownership in their upcoming performance. “What are we going to wear?” Corner turned: they’re starting to think like an […]
Entries Tagged as 'outcomes'
Rehearsal: skill development for kindergarteners
June 18th, 2009 · Comments Off · Uncategorized
Performance over, there’s finally time to review the process… There’s a lot to learn in the process of rehearsal, if the dance is built for continuous learning. And although the goal of rehearsal would seem to be a more perfect performance, it’s not. It’s growth. There’s a limit to how perfectly kindergarteners are going to […]
The dance cliché — tiresome? or useful?
January 29th, 2009 · 1 Comment · Uncategorized
It depends upon who’s using it. This dance is a cliché, with verbal descriptions and video examples, tickled my brain. Clearly, dance clichés aren’t any choreographer’s goal — confirmed by the number of videos in the discussion which have been disabled (presumably because it’s not a forum in which anyone would want to find their […]
Creating closure by performing early
December 20th, 2008 · 3 Comments · Uncategorized
I’m not good at creating closure. Much as I know that the best last thing in class is to guide kids to acknowledge and reflect on the topic of the day, I’m too often going full steam ahead at the moment when class should end. We finish with a flourish, and they rush out the […]
Space — an invitation to dance
October 11th, 2008 · 1 Comment · Uncategorized
A wide expanse. A clear, clean wooden floor. Sunlight from four high windows. The space invites movement. Kids rush in, sliding and cartwheeling. When it’s time to dance, they explode in all directions, running, dodging, leaping, careening almost out of control but mostly not. A few pick their way carefully through the channels of space […]
Space — getting along without it
September 28th, 2008 · Comments Off · Uncategorized
Dance requires space. Paradoxically, in order to make dance happen at all, dance educators spend a lot of energy trying to convincing people that it can happen in almost no space. And that’s somewhat true… When I taught 6th grade, my students danced between desks and leapt down the hallway between classrooms. On Friday afternoons, […]
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