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Planning age-appropriate dance lessons

This is an excerpt from Creative Dance for All Ages 3rd Edition With HKPropel Access by Anne Green Gilbert.

When planning a conceptual, creative dance class, take into account your students’ ages, experience, and physical and cognitive abilities. Age influences your lesson plan because certain motor and social skills are more appropriate for one age than for another age. Students of the same age may have different levels of experience (such as a 10-year-old with no dance experience and a 10-year-old with 3 years of dance experience), so experience is an important factor too. This section addresses both age- and experience-appropriate activities in the overview of the lesson plan. Physical and cognitive differences are addressed in chapter 1.

Warming Up

The objective of a warm-up is to warm the muscles, increase the heart rate to safely prepare for dancing, and focus the mind for learning. The BrainDance is an excellent warm-up exercise for all ages and abilities. However, BrainDance exercises do differ with age and experience. Students ages 0 to 3 do rhyming BrainDance patterns on the floor with the aid of a caregiver. Preschoolers do the BrainDance rhymes seated with or without a caregiver depending on the setting. As young dancers gain more experience or increase in age, you can add standing exercises and spend more time focusing on alignment, arm movements, balance, and rhythm. Students ages 8 to 12, teens, and young adults spend a longer time practicing technique embedded in the BrainDance when appropriate. Older adults enjoy longer BrainDances. Variations for specific age groups are explained in chapter 4 along with other warming up activities.

Exploring the Concept

Regardless of age, beginning-level students enjoy similar activities for exploring the concepts. Experienced students might layer on work with partners, a trio, a prop, or other concepts, or they may combine two or three explorations for more complexity.

Developing Skills

Developing Skills needs the most careful consideration in terms of what is appropriate at certain ages. Dancers with experience, who have already mastered skills in their age group, may be introduced to skills described in an older age group.

Children ages 0 to 2 are held or led by caregivers as they are introduced to basic movements such as crawling, creeping, rolling, walking, running, and jumping. They experience phrasing and rhythm through simple circle dances, instrument play, and movement patterns.

Children ages 3 to 4 learn and practice basic locomotor and nonlocomotor skills (see chapter 5 for appropriate skills). The focus might be on practicing previous skills while developing new ways of doing them, such as doing a familiar movement backward, faster, or bigger. Hopping and skipping might be introduced to 4-year-olds and more experienced 3-year-olds. Coordination of arm and leg movements is also developed. The teacher puts basic movements together to form short combinations.

Children ages 5 to 7 practice various ways of skipping and hopping along with more advanced locomotor skills, such as the step-hop and traveling turns. Dancers practice basic movements relating to a partner. Experienced students combine locomotor and nonlocomotor movements to create more advanced movements such as a slashing skip or floating leap. Props may be added to strengthen manipulative skills.

Children ages 8 to 12 perfect the basic locomotor and nonlocomotor skills while learning more advanced movements such as inversions and various falls. Experienced dancers may alter and combine familiar movements using the dance concepts to make them more challenging. They can learn complex combinations and often include partnering in their dancing. Props may be added to strengthen manipulative skills.

Teens and young adults practice combined locomotor and nonlocomotor skills using the dance concepts to add variety and create more complex movements. They perform skills using varying speeds and rhythms. They practice movements that require simultaneously using opposing concepts in the body (e.g., upper body is smooth while lower body is sharp). They learn or create complex combinations involving spatial and rhythmic patterns as well as various relationships with peers, props, and space.

Older adults review locomotor and nonlocomotor skills through creative folk dances. They also enjoy learning new movements through appropriate choreography created by the teacher.

Creating

Children ages 0 to 2 are held or led by caregivers as they follow the lead of the teacher through a structured improvisation reviewing the lesson concept. You may also introduce free play with sensory stimulating props with this age group.

Children ages 3 to 4 enjoy structured improvisation. This type of dance has a simple structure that allows young dancers to demonstrate to the teacher they understand and have embodied the dance concept introduced at the beginning of class.

Children ages 5 to 7 enjoy structured improvisation. They also begin developing composition skills through more complex improvisations and simple choreographic studies. Young choreographers can work in pairs to create simple AB, ABA, or ABC dances (a high/low dance, a high/low/high dance, or a high/middle/low dance). More experienced dancers can work in trios and small groups, add props, and learn various choreographic forms.

Children ages 8 to 12 create more complex dances using one or more dance concepts. Experienced dancers can use a variety of forms and devices, be given more time to create longer pieces, and be asked to develop themes. They may use structured improvisation as a foundation for choreography.

Teens and young adults continue to use improvisation as a tool to discover new movements and to become familiar with the dance concepts, choreographic tools, and devices. When choreographing, dancers experiment with various forms, styles, and music. Full use of props may occasionally add variety and complexity to the dances. Group and solo works are created. Students may take turns setting pieces on each other.

Older adults are given clear prompts such as art works, poetry, word sentences, textures, and natural objects to inspire choreography. Novice dancers enjoy working as a whole group with encouragement and guidance from the teacher. Dancers who have been in class for a while enjoy working together in small groups. More experienced dancers can offer support to novice dancers in a mixed-ability class.

Cooling Down

Children ages 0 to 2 rest with caregivers or engage in quiet sensory play.

Children ages 3 to 4 relax while the teacher uses visualization or manipulation to work on alignment and release of tension or review the lesson concept through a good-bye dance. For variation, they may do simple mirroring movements or review the lesson’s concept through discussion or drawing.

Children ages 5 to 7 relax as described for the 3- to 4-year-olds, review the dance concept through a good-bye dance, or share and reflect on their choreography studies.

Children ages 8 to 12 share and reflect on their choreography or do simple breathing and stretching exercises as they review the lesson’s concept vocabulary in a closure circle.

Teens and young adults work in pairs on alignment exercises, share and discuss choreography through various modes, or write in a journal. They may also review, stretch, and do breathing exercises in a closure circle.

Older adults share and reflect on their choreography or review the lesson’s concept kinesthetically as they breathe and rest.

More Excerpts From Creative Dance for All Ages 3rd Edition With HKPropel Access

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