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Dance: Illustration of Learning – 'Metamorphosis' unit

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  • Author :  admin
  • Date :  Feb 21, 2013
  • Views :  8004
  • Type :  2
  • Security:  image
  • Credits: 

    Janice Deans, Chief Writer

    Louise Saxton, Photographer

    Wendy Hulsbergen, Video Technician

  • Tags :  Dance curriculum
  • Supporting Documents:  

    Drawing telling portfolio


Dance

Dance
Student Learning


The teacher used a variety of approaches to support the documentation of children's learning.
Firstly, the teacher's critical evaluations from each week were used to maintain a comprehensive and systematic documentation of the dance class content and children's responses.

Learning stories (see example) were used to capture the learning of individuals and small and large groups of children. These were shared with families as one way of making the children's learning visible.

The teacher also recorded the children's bodily responses through photographs (examples: lesson photos 1|3|4), a technique that enabled the lived experience to be captured. Each participating child was regularly photographed, the aim being to create a gestalt of the individual's physical, social and emotional experience of learning in dance, and to provide an important memory aid for the assessment of each child.

Children were offered the opportunity to use digital still cameras to record their 'eye for dance' impressions of learning in dance. This empowered individuals to be part of the learning process and provided a technique for capturing the personal and individual interests of the children. These photographs also stimulated discussion with peers, teachers and parents.

At the conclusion of each class, the children were asked to 'draw something remembered from dance today' and were given a chance to share this reflective drawing-telling with their teacher. The teacher added each child's verbatim description of the drawing as a way of further honouring the voice of the child and as a tool for tracking children’s thoughts, feelings, images and actions during the class. Over time, this collection of drawings provided insight into development and understandings of concept knowledge. The drawings also helped the teacher understand the personal, social and intellectual worlds of individual children.

Using the Australian Curriculum Description of discipline content as outlined by ACARA., the teacher considered each child's response to the individual indicators of Children’s creative improvisations and learning processes in dance. and The children’s apprehension of the dance experience itself and appreciating and reflecting on the dances of peers.. Making here includes:
• spontaneous movement
• use of imagination
• use of dance elements
• ability to use a series of movements and to perform movements with control and expressive qualities
• sharing of dance with others
• recording personal responses when reflecting on their own and other's dances.

Responding includes recognising and describing their movements and movements of peers. 


This project is funded by the Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations.