Lesson Plans for Creative Dance: Connecting With Literature, Arts, and Music

Children love to express themselves through movement—and with this great new resource, you can guide them through a range of actions and dances that will help them develop both physically and mentally.

Lesson Plans for Creative Dance: Connecting With Literature, Arts, and Music is a resource for physical educators, classroom teachers, and dance specialists as well as a useful supplement to college level elementary education courses. Author Sally Carline has tested and refined the creative movement activities that she has prepared for educators and for preservice teachers, and she includes background material that will ground you in understanding how to best teach and incorporate movement activities in a variety of classes and settings.

Lesson Plans for Creative Dance supplies you with

• lesson plans that incorporate Laban movement concepts and extend children’s movement vocabulary;

• a progression of learning that creates a rich, extended experience for students;

• 28 dances with music for students through age 12; and

• ways to incorporate dance with various types of literature, art, and music.

Part I presents guidelines for assessing creative dance based on Rudolf Laban’s analysis of human movement. You learn about body, dynamic, spatial, and relationship awareness and gain insight into using rubrics to evaluate your students. You also learn how to help children warm up properly, channel their energy, and improve their footwork and rhythmic skills. Part I will help you incorporate dance with action words, action rhymes, and other poetry as well as with visuals and rhythm in a variety of settings.

Part II offers 28 age-appropriate, ready-to-use dances that include a variety of lesson progressions as your students acquire and develop movement skills. You will be able to teach dance skills and incorporate other creative elements and concepts to give your students an understanding of the many ways in which a skill can be performed.

Through Lesson Plans for Creative Dance, you can work on several ideas within the same lesson and continue to develop those ideas in future lessons. You can also incorporate ideas from language arts, social studies, art, music, and science to facilitate children’s learning and increase their enjoyment of various subjects.

This lesson planner will help you take your movement education to the next level, help your students acquire skills and knowledge, and bring meaning and joy to your creative dance sessions.