Level 1
Developing Practical Knowledge in Dance (PK)
Students will explore through movement the dance elements of body awareness, space, time, energy, and relationships.
Developing Ideas in Dance (DI)
Students will use personal experiences and imagination to express ideas in dance.
Communicating and Interpreting in Dance (CI)
Students will share movement through informal presentation and respond personally to their own and others' dance.
Understanding Dance in Context (UC)
Students will demonstrate an awareness of dance as part of community life.
Learning Examples
- Explore the element of space by making zigzag, straight, and curved
floor-pathways to the beat of a drum. Experiment with personal and
general space, using non-locomotor and locomotor movements (e.g.,
moving within a stationary space bubble; walking and skipping around
the room). (PK)
- Explore the element of body awareness by stretching, bending, and
twisting while standing, kneeling, and walking. (PK)
- Develop movements and dance ideas in response to images (e.g., a
toaster, the movement of a weta) drawn from current classroom themes
or topics. (PK, DI)
- Walk freely in general space, leading with different body parts.
Join up with a partner, and explore different ways of connecting the
same body part (e.g., hand to hand) and different body parts (e.g.,
hand to knee). Explore moving while connected to a partner in these
ways. (PK, DI)
- Create a movement to depict an action relating to getting up in
the morning. Individually explore different ways of doing this movement
(e.g., by making it bigger, smaller, faster, slower). Choose the most
effective version and share it with others. Select movements from
three different students and link them to make a short movement sequence.
Copy the sequence together. Repeat this with other students' movements.
(DI, PK, CI)
- Explore the element of relationships by copying and sharing simple
movement combinations drawn from nursery rhymes, singing games, action
songs, and simple dances. (PK, CI, UC)
- Share and talk about dances participated in or seen in the community.
(CI, UC)
- Make a movement sequence expressing ideas arrived at from listening
to a piece of instrumental music. Share the movement sequence with
others, and talk with them about the images suggested by its movements.
(DI, CI)
- Keep a class scrapbook of dance-related photographs or images published
in local media. Ask questions and talk about the who, what, when,
why, where, and how of the dance situations in the scrapbook. (UC,
CI)
- Explore the element of energy by moving in response to a variety of action words (e.g., floating, exploding, melting, growing). (PK)
