Student Artifacts
High School students perform at a school showcase.
Dance Elective Grade 5
Success Academy
Tap Dance Final Assessment
After a unit studying tap dance, students performed the Shim Sham Shimmy (a dance from the Vaudeville era) to their peers and teachers. I utilize mini in-class performances to develop student skills in the standard of performance, and prepare them for larger performance opportunities.
Dance Elective Grade 5
Success Academy
Class Project
After a unit studying jazz dance and the Charleston, students read “Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker” by Patricia Hruby Powell. Students designed a storybook page recounting one interesting fact about Josephine Baker.
Dance Elective Grade 6
Success Academy
Virtual Learning Unit Assessment
After a unit studying space and dance notations symbols for space, students were taught the electric slide. They were given the assignment to notate the electric slide’s movement through space. They were allowed to work with a partner, and could use any medium to create their notation.
Dance Elective Grade 5th and 6th/7th
Success Academy
Boogaloo/Pop & Lock Unit
Students spent a virtual online unit studying the history and style of West Coast Hip-Hop (Boogaloo and Pop & Lock). Students were tasked with various challenges in order to assess learning- including being asked to submit videos of themselves executing a moonwalk and a wave (featured below).
Dance Elective Grade 9
Brooklyn Collegiate High School
Summative Tap Timeline Assessment
Each week, students added 1-2 events or Tap Masters to their tap timelines, based on historical perspectives and tap masters discussed in class. At the end of the unit they submitted the finished product.
You will design a timeline from the origins of tap to today- identifying important tap masters as well as important developments in tap dance.
Dance Elective Grade 9
Brooklyn Collegiate High School
Summative Hip-Hop Assessment
After a unit of studying hip-hop dance, students were assessed on their ability to connect hip-hop to their lives, demonstrated by using an element of hip-hop culture to communicate something important to them.
For your final exam, you will be creating a project expressing something important to you. There are no limitations on what you wish to express.
You may choose any element of hip-hop to use as a medium for communication: Dance, Rap (or verse/poem), Graffiti, or even fashion
See exemplars of each: (provided for students)
University Level STUDENT ASSIGNMENTS AND WORK SAMPLES:
Dance 200 (Introduction to Dance) Fall 2016
University of Maryland
MIDTERM PROJECT
You will research a choreographer. Describe how the artist inhabited movement, what drove/drives their creation process, why their dance was historically significant, and how it impacts us today. Watch and explore various performances to reference in your paper. Use books, articles, and journals to support your paper.
Emotional component: create an artistic response based on how the choreographer’s work makes you feel.
Student Papers:
Dance 148 (Fundamentals of Modern I) Fall 2016
University of Maryland
PERFORMANCE RESPONSE
1. What did you SEE?
2. What did you FEEL and what in the dancing made you feel that way (technically) ?
3. What did you LIKE and what did you DISLIKE and WHY?
4. What was the choreographer TRYING TO DO in your estimation?
5. What ELEMENTS beyond the choreography contributed to or detracted from the choreography? (lighting, music, space, costumes, etc.)
Student Paper:
Dance 148 (Fundamentals of Modern I) Fall 2016
University of Maryland
MIDTERM ASSESSMENT
Each student will turn in a written assessment exploring their successes in the class so far, as well as noting any areas they need or desire further growth. Students will be graded on insightful understanding of their own bodies, as well as demonstrating a clear understanding of the skills that have been asked of them thus far.
1. What have I been most successful at in this class?
2. What have I been least successful at in this class?What do I need to do to improve on my least successful area?
3. What has been most exciting for me in this class and why?
4. What have I enjoyed least and why?
5. How has my body and/or my relationship to my body changed throughout the semester thus far?
Student Paper:
I build strong personal connections with students.
Each year at Rogers School I put over 700 students onstage. This school program was funded by Donna's Good Things: an organization founded by a family who lost their young daughter to cancer, and were committed to sharing the joy of dance which had buoyed their daughter during her illness.
When I go to work, I don't just learn about my students, I learn about the neighborhood they live in. Rogers Park is one of the most diverse neighborhoods in Chicago. Students at Rogers School have many religions, nationalities, backgrounds, and stories.
Performing Arts Limited facilitated the work with Rogers School. The studio also donated rehearsal space for my rehearsals. Building relationships with the community is important.
With Core Project Chicago, I was able to bring pop-up performances in-studio to both Performing Arts Limited and Chicago Contemporary Dance Theater (on the Southside of Chicago in Bridgeport.)
These performances demonstrated to the students how much can be done with very little, and allowed them an opportunity to see professional dance in their own community.
Chicago Contemporary Dance Theater (above) and DancEd Dance Center (below) are on opposite sides of Chicago. When my students from these studios competed against each other one year, I found all of them together backstage chatting and supporting the other teams. I help students build personal skills.
DancEd Dance Center center court at a Chicago Bulls game.
I always give my students something to dance about, whether it's a story, a theme, or pirates.
I use lifts and movement from my professional choreography to challenge students.
I invite my students to be a part of the choreographic process for their recital dances: encouraging them to make up moves.
I started Allegro Music and Dance's annual Thriller Flash Mob as a way to bring our students out into the community. Each year everyone in the studio dressed as a Zombie and stormed the street during the town's Halloween Hoe-Down.
I also started Allegro's Competition Team as a way for the girls to build exposure and challenge their technicality. One year we danced to a local musician's song, "10,000 Angels" and the girls even made a dance video for him.
I connect to my students on a personal level, and build a solid rapport so that class can be safe, and fun!
In my classroom there is laughter, learning, love, and occasionally pre-school anarchy