NextGen Digital Dance Classroom

As the year comes to a close, I look back at all that 2016 brought to my life, my classroom, and my students and I feel so very very blessed! Enjoying my last post for 2016 and looking forward to all that 2017 brings! Ballet: As described in the last post, Ballet studied the concept and vocabulary of pantomime. In groups, they chose a ballet to study and create their own choreography and pantomime scenes. The iPads came in handy for both music, watching repertoire, and viewing project guidelines. They then filmed their various sequences and edit in iMovie to present to the class. Here are some class examples: Dance 1 & 2: Completed their Create a Country Project. Students were paired and each group given a Google folder that contained a Doc with a project brainstorm template and a Slide template. They used these to design their own country (including various items such as motto, government, national animal/plant, native dress) and prepare a slideshow for presentation d

'Tis the season to be busy! There seems a frenetic energy as we head to the end of the semester and I love channeling this energy into as many student driven activities as possible. Keeping up with it all is a challenge but watching the process and celebrating the outcome makes it all worth it! So what have we been up to?! Dance 1 & 2 are working on their Create a Country Project. Students were paired and each group given a Google folder that contained a Doc containing a project brainstorm template and a Slide template. They used these to design their own country (including various items such as motto, government, national animal/plant, native dress) and prepare a slideshow for presentation day. They then used Drawing Desk and/or other various photo editing apps to create a and design a flag. Finally they used the iPads to play music while they choreograph a national dance. So looking forward to presentation day! Ballet studied the concept and vocabulary of pantomi

The day after a show is a little bit like the day after a big party. Every ones moves a little slower, there is clean up to be done, and some still have glitter stuck in their hair. Yet when the bell rings on Monday, you still have to be ready to greet those tired-eyed cherubs. So how to you get life "back to normal"? The first days after a show we celebrate our accomplishments by watching this show. We also have students do written show evaluations where they can make observations on dancing, lighting, costumes, and of course a self-reflection. I take care of all of this using Google Forms. All answers in 1 easy to access sheet! After our viewing days, we ended the unit with a production quiz. Any guesses what I used here? You got it...Google Forms. With Flubaroo being my favorite grading add-on. This quiz marked the 1st time the other members of my dance faculty took the plunge into online grading and loved it. For large classes without enough devices, they used ZipGr

It is show week and we all know that life in the performing arts world just gets crazier the closer you get to a show. It is times like these that I so very much appreciate the ease that Google Classroom provides for our daily journaling, video sharing, and communication. Instead of looking dauntingly at a pile of spiral notebooks, I have all of my journals complete and graded and ready for after show critiques and the start of the upcoming new unit. In my last post I referenced a lesson I did with Jazz 4 and involving both easy technology integration but also cross-curricular explorations in math. My Dance Educators class used the Hungry Hippo warm up from this lesson when teaching at Joe Lee Johnson this past week. Enjoy!! AND...come and see us dance on Saturday!! Free shows at 10am, 1pm, and 4pm, and the Round Rock ISD PAC. All Dance 1-4, Ballet, Jazz, Ballet Folklorico, and Dance & Media classes perform with classes with other schools from the district...INTERSECTION!!

I have been given the phenomenal opportunity to teach a class that focuses on developing and teaching STEAM infused dance classes to elementary students. For the 1st 6 weeks we have been creating classroom posters, going on music scavenger hunts, watching STEAM-dance videos, and practicing creating and teaching lessons. Then finally it happen, the week they have been waiting for....Week #1!! On Wednesday, we traveled to the school to practice all protocols and get a tour of the school. They prepared the room and put up their posters, getting so very excited for our 1st day. Our 1st lesson was designed to reinforce mathematics through dance in a variety of fun movement based activities. We return next week to review and create a math based dance. Snap shot of today's activities: 1. Name Game: creating movements to represent ourselves as we say names, everyone repeats 2. Hungry Hippos warm-up: card deck on iPad and a list of movement choices displayed on screen: draw 2 car

So week 4 lead us to the end of our first unit in order to have enough time for our Fall show preparation. The end of units are always followed by journal checks, combo tests, and written vocabulary and history quizzes. Loving Google Classroom for journals last year, I remain the biggest fan. My lower level younger classes had such a daunting learning curve the 1st few weeks that I questioned my decision to roll out the iPad journals to all classes at the same time. Flash forward to week 4 and I know I made the right decision. My students have become so comfortable with their devices that class is finally moving at an efficient pace. The icing on the cake is reflected in their journal grades. No matter how many days they were missing, no matter how many teacher reminders a student needs, Google Classroom gives both me and my students real-time reflections into journals at any point therefore giving 100% of my students 100% on their journaling grade. That is such a huge accomplishment

Hard to believe we are already halfway through the 1st grading period. With the first couple of weeks being so heavy with "housekeeping" (lockers, syllabus, roll call, history lessons, continuous students adding/dropping), I am happy to say that all classes have had a great week of dancing and are preparing for their upcoming test coming up next week. All classes are getting more and more comfortable with their devices. When students struggle, I am seeing more peers being able to lean over and help one another allowing class to move faster without me having to address each student individually. Every class is using Google Classroom for journals and class assignments and classes with vocab are all using StudyBlue. These tools make it easy for me to help students remain current with their journals before grading periods as well as students having access to materials to study for their test. Advanced classes are recording not only the vocab and the translation, but verbally r