Dance in Schools - Integrating the Arts

Dance provides developmental benefits and unique learning opportunities that come from organizing movement into the aesthetic experience of dance.

Dance keeps students engaged in school, enhances learning when integrated into academic subjects, and improves overall school culture. Read the Evidence Report from NDEO.

Dance integrates kinesthetic learning with understanding. Learning the art of dance helps young children develop knowledge, skill, and understanding about the world. When children are provided with creative movement problems that involve the selection of movement choices, they learn to think in the concrete reality of movement.

Dance helps children develop literacy. To the young child, verbal language and movement are entwined. Preverbal movement expression does not cease when a child develops language. The road to literacy involves the translation of movement expression and communication into words. Learning language and learning dance are not separate threads, but are woven together and incorporated into a fabric of communication and understanding.

Dance is a natural method for learning and a basic form of cultural expression. Children learn movement patterns as readily as they learn language. Just as all societies create forms of visual representation or organize sounds into music, all cultures organize movement and rhythm into one or more forms of dance.


From Missouri's Department of Elementary and Secondary Education
Missouri Learning Standards in Fine Arts - Dance

  • Missouri Learning Standards – Dance (Vertical Alignment): PDF

  • Missouri Learning Standards – Dance (Scope by Grade Level): Excel

National Dance Education Organization
https://www.ndeo.org/About/Dance-Education/K-12-Schools

MDO President - Lisa Geger - Recommends this resource to learn, speak and explore more about dance.

Modern American Dance Company - MADCO - St. Louis-based company reaching out entertain, educate and collaborate with Missouri students.

Other resources

Rire-Woodbury Dance Company -Online lessons for elementary dance that will not destroy the living room.

New Jersey Dance Resources

Success strategies for Movement and Theatre - googledoc/slide presentation from Stephen Buescher and Ezra LeBank

The Missouri Arts Integration Network allows those who involve the arts in their teaching to learn from presenters and peers, to reflect and ask questions, offer suggestions to support members of the community. No matter what stage of your journey to involve the arts in your teaching practice, there is a place for you at our MAIN events! Please join us, and invite others to do so as well.

PANDEMIC RESPONSE RESOURCES

National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) - Guidance for opening High School Athletics and Activities National Dance Education Association - (NDEO) Teaching Dance in Fall 2020

NDEO - National Dance Education Organization - Distance Learning Resources


Return to Dance - Safely - (performancemedicine.com.au)
VOCAL FATIGUE? view this Choralosophy Podcast Episode 42: Tips And Tricks for Vocal Health. Masked or Online. With Lori Sonnenberg
Distance Learning - Modules for learning BY MIssouri Teachers FOR Missouri Teachers. There are several modules to provide teachers learning to help improve distance learning created by former Missouri candidates for Teachers of the Year.