HOW TO TEACH DANCE pt. 1 | class management, lesson planning, strategies and more!

hi everyone and welcome back to my youtube channel my name is Jacky and I'm a teacher from Alberta Canada and I'm also a dance instructor in the evenings I have been a dance instructor for over 10 years and so I wanted to make a video all about how I lesson plan for a dance class so whether you are a student teacher or an existing gasps teacher or somebody who might think about becoming a dance teacher as a profession this video is for you and keep on watching hey everyone I just wanted to say that this is going to be a two-part video as I have a lot of good tips to share with you guys so enjoy this first part and part two will be uploaded in a few days I have taught pretty much all ages and dance and so the first video I wanted to make today is mostly geared towards the younger dancers so maybe their first 4 years of dance around the 6 to 10 age group the reason why I want to make this more specifically is right now as a career I am an elementary school teacher I am I've taught this year grade five and I'm looping next year with my grade 6 class and I've also taught junior high and so you do tend to lesson plan a little bit differently depending on the age group of the students so this video will hopefully give you some better tips if you are somebody who is teaching that younger age feel free to print off the lesson plan template that I put in the description box below or you can come up with your own design that kind of fits your needs as a teacher and you can just follow along with this video as I explain all of its different parts alright when you were starting out designing your lesson plan for your dance class you want to make sure at the top you are always putting a learning goal or a learning intention so that sometimes is called a bat statement so a be able to and you want to be able to say okay by the end of this dance class I want my students to be able to do what and so right at the top when you're gonna add that into your lesson plan you can then cater all the different parts into working towards that one goal sometimes it can feel a little bit overwhelming as a teacher or as a dance instructor when you have so many different moving parts within the dance class so you not only have the class or management side of things you're trying to teach like the discipline and the routine of being in a dance class you're trying to develop their technique you're trying to develop their teamwork skills you're trying to get them to be a positive contributing member of the dance class and so when you're trying to balance all those different things it's really good at the top to just come up with common goal that you can kind of work your whole other lesson around so for example if you have a younger class if it's the beginning of the year it might be as simple as having the students come in and sit in a circle and being able to pick up on verbal cues from their teacher so really in those first few months you want to be able to develop that relationship with your students and so that's what developing that routine right out of the gate so come up with that learning goal or that learning intention that you want to achieve by the end of the class and that makes sure also that you are accountable to making sure that the students are always coming out of that class with a new skill that they have learned or that they're working towards you want to make sure that at the end of your dance class the students do feel successful so if you don't have that targeted goal you couldn't be kind of sporadically teaching them this not in this and that and they could leave quite confused and they might not be able to respond as you are expecting them to respond right so everything from verbal cueing to counting in music knowing their spatial awareness and where to stand knowing how to line up to go across the floor all of these little skills really need to be taught explicitly at that younger age with that age group you want that goal to be quite narrow so that you can build upon their skills as a year progresses next on the lesson plan is you want to make sure that you have all of your materials written down and this is because as a dance teacher you might be teaching in various locations you might be teaching at a community center or for summer camps or various studios around your city so you want to make sure that you're always prepared and professional when you're entering into your job so list of materials you can add on our you know double check to see if the facility can play its own music making sure that you have access to technology or any type of music so your playlist or your Spotify account or everything can be accessed when you're teaching the class I know sometimes I have taught in school buildings and I haven't been able to get my Wi-Fi connected in there so it's really important that you're downloading your playlist before you enter your job different materials that you can add on to your list for teaching or different tools that you can bring into the classroom for teaching that younger age group so something that I suggest might be vinyl stickers that you can peel and stick on the floor for different place markers you can have physical silicone dots that you can buy that lay flat on the floor that students can associate spacial awareness based on color you can also use electrical tape to markers on the floor so that you can mark up your stage where students need to stand or even where you want them to start when they're gonna go across the floor another thing you can bring along with you are just small yoga blocks they're great tools to use for some games if you wanted to play getting kids to learn how to jump and travel and also being able to manage their space between each other but now that you have your learning and tension set for the day and you've recorded all the materials that you need to be successful as a teacher or a coach you can then work through the next five sections of the lesson plan the first section is the class entrance and building up a class routine the second one is to plan out your warmup third one is across the floor fourth one is teaching choreography and in the fifth section we have your reverence or how you want to end the class so I'm gonna walk you through each of these different stages and kind of different tips and tricks that I use as a dance instructor to make sure that at all of these different things I'm planning out to make sure that I'm always coming back to that learning goal that I intended at the beginning the first thing is your pre class routine so this is how you want to start your class if you are out of studio where you have the same recurring a class all year round you want to make sure that you are consistent with welcoming students into the room it's really good if you can stand at the front of the room or at the door and greet students as they come into the classroom make yourself known to the parents and reassuring the students that they're about to have fun with you for the day and that they're about to meet a lot of new friends and that they have the same expectations every single time that they enter the room so for this pre class routine I like to break it down into three simple steps that the students can follow they enter the class which is either like you could give them a high five or an elbow bump or a fist bump say hello next thing is that they put their water bottle down where you want them to keep their water bottle or any change of shoes or belongings that they may have and the third one is to sit in a circle so if you keep those same three expectations every single time the students will be ready to come into class they'll know where to go they'll know where to put their stuff and they may not have as much anxiety as they did before the class has started this is also a way to make sure that they're feeling welcomed into the class and that you're accepting them into this new space so allowing the students to sit in a circle you know you can say crisscross applesauce you can say you listen with a calm whole body and you really want to make sure that the students are listening to you before you start your instruction always sit with the students you never want to seem like you're standing up or that you're too far above them to build that relationship you really want to make yourself at eye level so sitting down in the circle with your students is a good tip circle time for students in their first dance class is a great way for them to feel comfortable and confident in a dance studio so I like to do a question of the day where you go around and you ask a simple question it could be anything from what's your favorite color what's your favorite food just something really easy that the students can come up with independently and each student gets their turn to speak as a dance teacher it's really important that you are modeling the behavior that and respect that you want your students to achieve so when somebody is about to speak their turn in the circle making sure that you're giving those verbal cues and physical cues to the students about how they should be acting in that circle so I always like to say I know you're ready for question of the day when we're sitting with our legs crossed our hands are in our own laps and our eyes are on the teacher and you can kind of point to your eyes and have all the kids actually look you in the eyes because eye contact is really important to show that you are listening and I always like to say that I know you're listening when and then say what kind of physical cue you want to see from your students so I know you're listening when your body looks like this I know you're listening when your eyes are looking where and I know you're listening when your hands are where because sometimes they might be touching other students and might be rolling on the ground they might be kind of just very very antsy and excited to get on with their class but it's important that you bring them all together to understand that okay the person who is in charge of your class today who needs to have the respect is your dance teacher so give them your respect and then the respect from the dance teacher then gets transferred over to your peer and then they have the floor right and so you feel free to stop and pause as they're doing question of the day oh I know it's Sally's turn to us to answer the question and I know Sally is ready to give her answer when everybody is and then repeat those same expectations consistency and patience is key when you are working with students at this age especially in the first few months so that they feel comfortable with the routine of the class they feel respected because you are allowing the students to actually show them respect and that they feel comfortable with being able to speak their mind about what matters to them and that makes them feel important that makes them feel like they have a voice and that the other students can respect what their peers have to say depending on your class size your question of the day might take anywhere from five to ten minutes usually at the beginning it might take a little longer so make sure when you're scheduling out the time you have allocated for your four question of the day that you're being mindful that at the beginning it does take a little bit of time you don't want to drag it on right you may be the first few classes you don't even introduce question of the day and it's all just about you know gathering in that circle to have the focus on the teacher and then you slowly build up how allowing the student is to take different turns so you got to kind of see what the group is like and you have to be able to recognize what your students needs are and then try to adjust your plan from there after everybody has done the question of the day I always like to go through the expectations of what they can expect from the class so I'll say all right thank you everybody for sharing today we are gonna do a warm-up we're gonna go across the floor and then we're gonna learn a small dance combination and again keep the steps about two to three steps maximum for this age group and you can constantly repeat them as you are providing instruction for the students so they know what's coming next so you're always gonna have those kids who are asking you know what's next what's next and they might not have the best concept of time or time management and so you always want to be able to reassure them that okay we're done this now we're moving on to this and after that we're gonna do this so you can either do the three-step instruction where you're giving them those three verbal cues or you can do four where it's a first then next last statement which keeps the students always looking forward to that next thing so you've got your learning intention done you got your materials set up everybody's sitting in the class you finish question the day you're feeling good but the kids are starting to move around and they're just ready to start their dance class so now we're moving into the warm-up section of your lesson plan so a really good strategy of cueing kids of when it's time to move and when it's time to find a new space is you can give them a hidden clue or a hidden word so you if they can spell you can say when I say the word F is H I want you to stand up and you can say banana octopus orange fish and when they hear that word they they'll stand up and until they hear that word they have to stay seated if they don't know how to spell you can just say when I say the word octopus I want you to stand up then you can say when I say the word book I want you to take two steps back and they can spread out one two if you are using tape or lines in the floor you can just number them off you can give them anything from numbers you can give the kids candy bar names you could give the kids colors so I frequently give them chocolate bar names or candy names so I'll say you know every other person you're a jellybean you're a Mars bar you're a jellybean you're a Mars bar front line you're Mars bars so come stand on the front line back line your jellybeans so stand in the back line and depending on the age of the students maybe they do know what it is like to stand in the line maybe they don't so commonly you will have to spend a lot of those first few months getting them used to finding their own space so great verbal cue for that is move your own feet and move your own body to where you can't touch anybody and you can kind of wave your arms around so that they can they can spread out if you tell a group of kids okay stand up spread out and stand in lines they're not gonna know that cue yet so you really have to be very explicit with what you want them to do and how you want them to do it if you have a large class and you may have a student teacher to help you out you can always get the kids down in the lines that they're expected to and then you get them to memorize where they stand so whether that's that color dot on the floor whether that's the people around them and you can introduce other social things that they can talk to each other about so okay once you get them just down where they are if they're a little bit older you can say tell the person next to you what your favorite color is if you have skipped question of the day or you can say tell the person next to you what color shoes you wore today and they can talk about that so again just building on their social and relationship skills and getting them to be a little bit more spatially aware about where you want them to stand I'm not going to go into necessarily the technique of what you are expected to teach of that age group with a warm up you can follow the syllabus that your studio follows or you you know use your background knowledge as a professional to know what's best for that age group so right away you know you want to start your warm up with a good cardio session so that's jumping jacks those are bunny hops those are frog jumps something that's really gonna get that energy out of those you know vibrating kids they always want to just laugh as soon as they they start their warmup so really big movements that's going to increase their gross motor function I know a lot of dance teachers when you start out you expect that age group to be able to do so much more than maybe they come into the dance studio with but just remember it's your job to know what the students can or can't do yet and be able to plan accordingly to build up those skills the students aren't going to come in knowing how to do cartwheels and knowing how to do jumping jacks and knowing how to do bunny hops you kind of have to really develop that understanding of what their body is supposed to be doing with that exercise so the best thing you can do is demonstrate everything your job as a dance teacher is not to sit on a stool and to watch and just shout directions at the class you really have to be active and engaged with your students so that you want them to hop like a bunny you better be getting your paws up and hopping like a bunny you want to make sure that you are as invested in the class and they will in turn be as invested as you are you want to be able to lead with that charisma and that that energy so that the students respond well to it if you go in there and you want to sit and you're tired and you're you know in your socks and you're not prepared to teach the energy level that's coming to the room you will lose control of your class very quickly so you want to make sure that you are leading with that same passion and charisma and the students will respond very very positively back all right you've done your cardio you can always do a little bit of a stretch and the best thing is when you're introducing dance technique to students at this age you want to make sure that you are using a lot of symbols and a lot of references that they would know so if you want them to stand in a Jaa's first position ice okay put your feet together like french fries if they're standing in a classical first position okay put your heels together like we're making a big piece of pizza or a big slice of pie you want to make sure that your use things that they know right if you want them to stand with their arms in first position holding it round like you're holding a giant beach ball you want to use a lot of those metaphors and a lot of those symbols and a lot of the similes so that they understand and can reference the shape that you want their body to make so hopping like a bunny okay they know what that looks like if you're trying to get them to do jumping jacks you jump out looking like a star you go in tight like a rocket or like a pencil and you jump out like a star and tight like a rocket and once you build up those different metaphors that you want them to make comparisons to and you use the same ones over and over again they start to associate what the action needs to be what their body position needs to look like and then on top of that you're adding in the technical name so the best way for them to kind of understand and develop those different skills is to really say it again and again and again so you can say you know jump like a star like a rocket like a star like a rocket and we're doing our jumping jacks and so you're building and what that mode what that movement is along with what their body should look like and also what their verbal cueing sounds like from their teacher it's always great to assess at this point to see what students have that coordination and what students you may need to work a little bit more with when it comes to some of those basic gross motor functions so in your lesson plan on the sidebar whether you're using sticky notes or you have this on an iPad and you're just writing it with a pencil when you're giving the students a water break make note of those students that you're like yes can they do jumping jacks or make note of the ones that you say okay they're not quite getting the coordination of going out and in yet and so I need to revisit this next week and help out these three kids you always want to make sure that you are constantly assessing what the students can't do what they can do and what you want them to work on after they've done that move so if I just started a dance class and the entire class had no knowledge of what a jumping jack was I'll really break it down to what it looks like jumping with your feet together first what that looks like jumping with your feet apart and then what that looks like just with your arms so separating the bottom half from the top half of your body and this goes for all dance technique if the students aren't getting something that you're teaching right away put the hands on the hips just concentrate on the feet once they get the feet stand still and just do the arms and then you can start adding in together and that might be over a course of four or five classes you don't have to get students to understand the the you know mechanics of a jumping jack right away or any technical dance move whether it's a rotary or a turn or a pirouette or jumping any or anything that you're trying to build their repertoire and skills in you want to make sure that you are really going down to those basic foundations and having them feel confident with those foundations before you're moving on with their technical progression right after your warmup or whether you're standing at the bar if you're doing a class where you do have access to a bar that's great and you can kind of use that electrical tape idea you can even write their name on painters tape to put on the bar you could put on different stickers and so if you kind of want to change up where they stand you can put on different stickers whether it's a smiley face or an emoji or just different areas that you want them to stand it's always good because you can check okay is your left hand on your smiley face and they can check to see if their hand is actually there because a lot of times when students are first dancing at the bar they'll hang on the bar they'll be in each other's faces they won't they won't respect each other's personal space yet so when you're trying to introduce to them the the rules and kind of the whole the the respecting of the of the facility and the space that they're dancing with you can add on those materials to your list to bring into the class so a side note is about that respect of the space and I do introduce this throughout the class not always as they're sitting down and listening but as they're actively about to approach a new task so if we are going to go to the bar after our warm-up I'm gonna say okay we are gonna go to the bar but I have some rules about the bar and if they have had dance for a few years you can ask the students to come up with the rules themself they're probably very aware of them but you yourself you can demonstrate what those rules are so you can say when I go to the bar I'm going to walk slowly like a sloth and again using that imagery to get them to walk slowly to the bar because I've had students run into the bar and completely just smack into the bar so I'm gonna walk slowly like a turtle towards the bar and I'm gonna put one hand on my smiley face sticker or one hand where I stand and you put the other hand on my hip and my eyes are gonna go to the teacher so gun demonstrating kind of three-step instructions and then saying okay one two three go or I want you there in five four three two one never underestimate the power of a countdown and I use this all the time I use this even with my senior students a countdown the students have experienced with their parents I'm sure you're counting down for them to rush into what you want them to do not even rush but just you want them to get there in a timely manner if you just said okay stand up and find a spot at the bar kids who just started out their dance class may not follow that direction they might be going all over the place and get a drink of water some of them will be licking the mirrors or putting their hands on the railing and and just all over the place like monkeys so never underestimate the power of a countdown I always say you are signing at the bar in five four three two one and I'll count down to make sure that they're there ready to go if you're giving them a water break okay your water break is over in 20 and countdown right so that it gives them the time to transition it's a dance teacher it is your job to teach them how to transition in the dance studio it is gonna look different from how they're transitioning at school it's gonna look different from how they're transitioning at home but you want to make sure you're saying okay from this spot you're going to walk run hop skip doesn't matter to this spot and when they're transitioning you doesn't have to be okay walk to that spot if there are young kids and they've got lots of energy say okay we are gonna crawl like ninjas and you're gonna crawl around and sneak around like ninjas to your spot and you wouldn't believe how much they buy into that character work right students who are in dance class are probably you know very high-energy students they're probably extroverts on all of them but they probably love playing those games right and the buy-in is crazy so if you just say okay instead of just get to your spot stand up get ready you know be ready to go five six seven eight you know you're not running a military here you want them to have fun in their dance class so hop like a bunny to your spot crawl like a turtle you know jump like a kangaroo any type of animal it works thanks everybody for watching part 1 of this video I will upload part 2 in the next couple days here so until then have an awesome day you

Channel: Jackie Zed

Views: 33,257

Keywords: dance moms, dance workout, dance music, dance songs, dance again, teaching online, teaching english online, teaching at home, teaching ballet, teaching english Teacher vlog, Dance teaching, Dance teaching online, How to teach dance, How to teach grade 5, how to teach a dance class, how to teach kids to dance, how to teach dance to kids, dance for kids, how to lesson plan, how to lesson plan for dance, classroom management, how to manage a class, lesson planning for dance

Id: I8NEt4Vp-Cw

Length: 22min 29sec (1349 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 16 2020