Miss Kim’s Dance School Lesson Plan

Unit Topic or Theme: Dance

Grade: Moderate to Advanced dancers (ages 16 and up)

Lesson Topic or Theme: Ballet – Contemporary

Lesson Objectives: The Student will be able to:

Successfully define ballet vocabulary

Identify a contemporary routine

Research contemporary artists and their work

Perform their own contemporary choreography

Instructional Technique:

Find out what students know about contemporary dance

Practice technique and vocabulary in studio

Take home quiz

Performance Piece

Performance day

Instructional Materials: (provide specific bibliographic information and/or copies of handouts, instructional sheets etc.)

Dance studio

Stereo – music

Computer – Internet access

Vocabulary Worksheet Quiz

Performance Piece Guidelines

Performance rubric  

Theoretical Perspective: As a dancer it is important to constantly expand your knowledge and abilities. Learning different forms of dance expands your range and technically improves your dancing. Learning different styles also helps you maintain an open mind and inspires new choreography.

Procedure:

A. Introductory Activity: In class I will talk about the history of Ballet and Contemporary dance forms. I will start by asking if any of my students know what contemporary ballet is or how it originated. This way I can gage how much my students know and how much information I need to cover.

B. Step-by-step:

* We will spend the class in studio working on ballet technique and experiment with contemporary choreography. This studio session will last around 3 hours. During the class as we dance I will point of the proper names of the moves we are doing and review vocabulary which they should already be familiar with.

* At the end of class I will hand out a take home Dance Quiz and Performance Project.

* At home the students will need to complete the vocabulary worksheet and define each word fully and find a picture that represents the move. This quiz will be collected before class the following week.

* The performance piece requires students to research contemporary dancers and study their work. I expect dancers to go online and watch many different types of dance videos and find which artists inspire them. Following their research my dancers will need to choose a song to choreograph to.

* Students have 2 weeks to create a contemporary piece to perform in class. The must name their dance and explain what it means to them. The dance can be symbolic or represent an idea or theme. Their dances must be at least 1 and ½ minuets long but no longer than 2 minutes. 

C. Closure: In 2 weeks as a class we will have a performance day and each dancer will perform their Contemporary piece for the class. As my students perform I will grade their performance and piece. At the end of everyone’s performance we will all gather and talk about what we have learned about Contemporary dance and how it affects us and the dance world. 

D. Adaptations for different learners: Modifications for younger students for this lesson plan would definitely require more participation on my part. Most of this lesson would take place in the studio rather than individually like the older students. I would need to assist the younger students in creating their performance piece. I would also decrease the performance time to one minute and perhaps change the dance form. Instead of studying contemporary dance which is a more advanced form – perhaps we could practice simpler forms such as basic ballet or jazz.  

Homework: Contemporary Performance Piece 

Evaluation: Rubric on Performance Piece