NextGen Digital Dance Classroom

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

After a week of syllabus, icebreakers, locker distribution, week two has begun the journey into the reason we are all here: DANCE. We began our first week of exploring the history of our various dance forms, began our study of dance vocabulary, and for many...began our first week of becoming familiar with a new tool in the classroom, our iPads. Every class was given their Jazz or Ballet History lesson via Prezi or Emaze. They took their notes on a shared Padlet to be shared on Google Classroom. When students return to that document to study for their test, they will have both their own notes and those of others to pull from. They also will be able to access the material from any location without having to take home a spiral or piece of paper. Since I have students that repeat courses at various levels, I like to plan various or new activities from year-to-year. So for my ballet class, the plan was to use Bubbl.us, an app that I used last year with Dance 2. It still worked on my iPa