1. Performing Arts in the Real World: Dance
Helen Champion
Webinar, 25 May 2017

2. Session overview typical learning activities
learning opportunities that are relevant and appropriately challenging
research and practice
assessment
reporting

3. Where is Dance in the Whole school, Level and Domain plans at your school?
On the timetable?
Core?
Elective?
Co-curricula?
Embedded in multidisciplinary inquiry/project-based learning?
Discussion &
Sharing
What’s happening at your school?
Why is it important to know, document and promote this information?

4. Arts curriculum design
VICTORIAN CURRICULUM: THE ARTS
Same framework for all Arts disciplines
Designed for use in multiple contexts
No set pedagogies, texts or styles

5. Victorian Curriculum: The Arts4
Strands:
explore & express/represent ideas
practices
present & perform
respond & interpret + 2
Organising ideas:
students learn as artist and as audience
Students learn by making & responding

6. What’s on the Victorian Curriculum website?
Victorian Curriculum index page
Curriculum planning resource
Navigating the website videos
Curriculum area advice

7. Is there a glossary? And what about the capabilities and cross-curriculum priorities?
The Arts landing page
In the Victorian Curriculum F–10, the Arts includes Dance, Drama, Media Arts, Music, Visual Arts and Visual Communication Design.
The Arts enable students to develop their creative and expressive capacities by learning about the different practices, disciplines and traditions that have shaped the expression of culture locally, nationally and globally. Students are both artist and audience in the Arts. They make and respond and learn to appreciate the specific ways this occurs in different disciplines.
The Arts present ideas that are dynamic and rich in tradition. Through engaging in The Arts students are entertained, challenged and provoked to respond to questions and assumptions about individual and community identity, taking into account different histories and cultures. The Arts contributes to the development of confident and creative individuals and enriches Australian society. Students express, represent and communicate ideas in contemporary, traditional and emerging arts forms. In Dance, Drama and Music students explore the performing arts whilst in Media Arts, Visual Arts and Visual Communication Design students explore the world of visual representation and expression.
The significant contributions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to Australia’s arts heritage and contemporary arts practices are explored across the Arts, and students are encouraged to respect and value these unique and evolving traditions.
Learning areas & capabilities
Koorie Cross-curricula protocols
Aboriginal languages: sample units
Creative Spirits, Melbourne Festival Tanderrum, Dreamtime at the G

8. What’s ‘typical’ in Dance?
Learning dance knowledge, skills and understandings, aka, dance practice, being a dancer
Learning process: opportunities to learn mediated by prior learning and personal experiences, the school instructional model, the curriculum framework, assessment practice …
Learning outcomes:
Students are able to ‘express, question and celebrate human experience, using the body as the instrument and movement as the medium for personal, social, emotional, spiritual and physical communication’. [VC, The Arts – Dance, Rationale]

9. What’s ‘typical’ in Dance?
Starting points: styles, techniques/skills, themes, performers, improvising …
Learning intentions, pedagogies, formative and summative assessment, curriculum content:
Explore and express ideas, practise dance, present and perform, interpret and respond
Students who have dance knowledge, skills and understandings and are able to contribute to their communities as dancers, choreographers and audiences promoting wellbeing and social inclusion.

10. Typical starting points?
directed warm-up
structured improvisation
technique
skill-development
dance on screen
analysis
iconic performers
styles …
EXPLORE & EXPRESS
PRACTICES
PRESENT & PERFORM
RESPOND & INTERPRET

11. Curriculum designed as a continuum v non-continuous student access to learning
Issues
Level v year
2 year bands
Catering for the range of experience in the classroom/studio
Electives
Reporting
On the VCAA website
Curriculum design
Dance Scope & sequence
Research and resources (an incomplete sample)
Essential teaching practices
Australian Dance Theatre
Chunky Move
ETC
Rainbow Vomit
EXPLORE & EXPRESS
PRACTICES
PRESENT & PERFORM
RESPOND & INTERPRET

12. F 1-2 3 - 4 5-6 7-8 9-10 Opportunity to learn
Continuous opportunities to learn provided across F-10
Increases likelihood that1:1 relationship between curriculum level and year level can be maintained

13. Which level? F
1-2
3 - 4
5-6
7-8
9-10
If students’ only access to Dance learning happens when they are in Year 7, which curriculum level should their learning program be based on, and, which level should they be expected to achieve?

14. Which level? F 1-2 3 - 4 5-6 7-8 9-10 F 1-2 3 - 4 5-6 7-8 9-10 VCE
Or, if these students are in the same class?

15. F-6 in a semester? Explore and express ideas Learning activities
Use fundamental locomotor and non-locomotor movements, body parts, bases and zones to explore safe movement possibilities and dance ideas
Stimulus:
Rainbow Vomit by Dance North
Use safe dance practice, fundamental locomotor and non-locomotor movements, body parts, bases and zones to explore, improvise and structure movement ideas for dance
Improvise and structure movement ideas for dance sequences using safe dance practice, the elements of dance and choreographic devices
Explore movement possibilities and choreographic devices using safe dance practice, the elements of dance to create movement ideas, sequences and phrases
Exploring through structured improv
shapes
use of space
Patterns
Practising skills, techniques, processes
Presenting
Soundtrack and production elements
Responding
Use of shapes, space & patterns
Student and professional dancers

16. Create a work in response to Dance North’s ‘Rainbow Vomit’
with 7-10 happening too?
Explore and express ideas
Learning activities
7-8
Use safe dance practice, elements of dance, body actions and improvisations to explore ways of making literal movements into abstract movements
Create a work in response to Dance North’s ‘Rainbow Vomit’
Interpret shapes, phrases
Respond to ideas and movements
Explore time, space, relationships, dynamics, production possibilities
Practise dance-making, using choreographic devices, abstracting, forming phrases and sequences, documenting …
Perform
Respond and evaluate
Develop their choreographic intent by applying the elements of dance to select and organise movement
9-10
Explore personal movement style by combining elements of dance and using improvisation and safe dance practice to develop new movement possibilities
Manipulate combinations of the elements of dance and choreographic devices to communicate their choreographic intent

17. Planning questions
Why is this activity in the learning plan for this student/group of students?
What are the key concepts the students will learn?
How will you know what students already know and what learning has occurred?
How does the activity mesh with the school instructional model ?
EXPLORE & EXPRESS
PRACTICES
PRESENT & PERFORM
RESPOND & INTERPRET

18. More planning questions
How is the activity
introduced?
taught?
aligned to prior learning?
varied to cater for different levels of knowledge and skill?
How does the activity connect to the rest of the unit/sequence?
What opportunities are there for formative assessment?
self-assessment
peer-assessment
teacher observation
EXPLORE & EXPRESS
PRACTICES
PRESENT & PERFORM
RESPOND & INTERPRET

19. Sequencing and developing
Dance Achievement Standards
Rainbow vomit F
make and perform dance sequences and demonstrate safe dance practice.
Students describe what happens in dance they make, perform and view 
1-2
use the elements of dance and fundamental movement skills to make and perform safely, dance sequences that express ideas.
Students communicate about dances they make, perform and view, and discuss where and why people dance
3-4
structure movements into dance sequences and use the elements of dance and choreographic devices to communicate their ideas and intentions. They make dances and perform safely with control, accuracy, projection and focus.
Students describe and discuss similarities and differences between dances they make, perform and view. They discuss how they and others organise the elements of dance to communicate ideas and intentions.
5-6
structure movements in dance sequences and use elements of dance and choreographic devices to make dances that communicate ideas and intentions. They perform dances for audiences, demonstrating technical and expressive skills and safe dance practice.
Students explain how the elements of dance, choreographic devices and production elements communicate ideas and intentions in dances they make, perform and view. They describe characteristics of dances from different social, historical and cultural contexts and discuss how these influence their dance making
7-8
choreograph and perform dances to communicate ideas and intentions. They improvise movement and select and organise the elements of dance, choreographic devices and form to communicate choreographic intent. Students learn, rehearse and perform dances, demonstrating technical and expressive skills appropriate to the dance style and safe dance practice.
Students identify and analyse the elements of dance, choreographic devices and production elements of dances in different styles and apply this knowledge to dances they make and perform. They evaluate how they and other dance practitioners from different cultures, times and locations, communicate ideas and intentions through dance.

20. Reporting Check the Guidelines and advice from your school sector
Report against the Achievement Standards, not the content descriptions
Develop an approach that
Recognises how many opportunities there are to report on learning in Dance
Which level?
How will progress be shown?
Acknowledges students’ prior learning (or lack thereof)
Focus on the dance and keep it relevant
Use language from the curriculum
Refer to class activities
If possible, make the report interactive by including/linking to evidence from student’s self-assessments, peer observations etc.

21. Feedback
Please complete the survey the F-10 unit will to you so that I get your feedback about the relevance of this presentation for your work and whether it met your expectations. You can also me directly:
Helen Champion
Curriculum Manager: Performing Arts
phone: