Overview of the National Dance Education Standards Framework and Standards-based lesson plan format.

The National Dance Society National Dance Education Standards Framework combines dance knowledge, content, principles, processes, and values to form a structure that supports every child learning dance. You can download your personal copy of the National Dance Education Standards here. The National Dance Education Standards correlate to an outcome-based or standards-based education. The Framework contains these sections:

  • Strands present an area of dance knowledge as a discipline. Each strand includes dance processes, structures, and products for learning dance; these relate to acquiring dance, art, and media literacies as well as other skills crucial to college and career preparation.
  • Standards are broad statements about dance knowledge, skills, and values students should know and be able to do at the end of a specific time period.
  • Performance indicators are written as learner outcomes or what the student will do. Each performance indicator relates to psychomotor, cognitive, and affective domains of learning.

    The performance indicators are what teachers use to develop learner outcomes or objectives and evaluation tools. The performance indicators identify age-appropriate and developmentally appropriate learning and performance ability indicators for students at the completion of a grade grouping: Grades K-2, 3-5, 6-8, or 9-12. The performance indicators are guidelines since students may meet, exceed, or cannot be evaluated in relation to the indicators. Also, dance education programs vary dependent upon if it begins in kindergarten or elementary school, middle school, or high school.

Lesson plan formats are as varied as there are schools, districts, and organizations that provide dance education. For this lesson plan collection, the National Dance Society Standards in Action Team developed a standards-based lesson plan format with the following components.

Title of the Dance Lesson Plan

Topic or concept, and goal of the lesson. This is important when the lesson is part of a learning experience or a unit plan.
Grade, Class (the lesson number, length of lesson, and class time)

State Dance and/or Physical Education (dance) Standards
National Dance Society National Dance Education Standards Framework

Strand(s)
Standard(s)
Performance Indicators(s)

Learner Objectives or Outcomes.
Learner objectives: A learning objective describes the learning goal for a lesson or learning experience. The objective is something a student will be able to do in order to demonstrate physical, intellectual, or affective knowledge or skills as the result of completing a specific lesson plan or learning experience
Learner outcomes: A learner outcome is a learning target or exit behavior that is actionable and measurable to demonstrate authentic tasks or real-world application of knowledge, skills, and values in dance through the domains of

Psychomotor
Cognitive
Affective or Social and Emotional learning model

Learner objectives or outcomes link to the assessment modality or rubric for each domain which should include at least one “authentic or real-world task”.
Assessment (informal or formative): The lesson plan assessment is a rubric which connects to the learner objectives or outcomes in the psychomotor, cognitive, affective, or social and emotional learning.

Materials include resources to teach the lesson such as space requirements, other resources, media, and suggested music.
Vocabulary terms: Some terms may be found in the National Dance Education Standards glossary. Lesson plan specific terms are presented here.

Dance Lesson Instruction in a lesson or learning experience is a sequence of timed components:

  • Introduction to the lesson and/or warm-up
  • Exploratory experiences
  • New material
  • Recap of Learning and/or Summary, and Cool Down.
    Before dance instruction begins, the teacher pre-assesses students. Throughout the dance instruction, the teacher observes and assesses student learning and implements the following components:
  • Management of the classroom and the content being taught
  • Transition between each lesson component such change in content or moving to a different

    place in the dance space.

  • Teaching Process or the how you teach the lesson
  • Teaching Points which may be technical or musical cues

    In relation to the dance instruction sequence, the teacher outlines in the lesson plan:

Modifications: This section outlines how the lesson components will be changed for specific students or groups of students such as gifted and talented or other students. Accommodations: This section outlines how the lesson will be changed for individuals with disabilities

Extensions: This section presents the interdisciplinary topic connections made as part of the dance lesson.

Lesson Reflection and Next Teaching Steps: After the class, the teacher reviews and assesses the lesson’s content, dance instruction, student response and observable learning during today’s lesson for determining the next teaching steps for students in the class.

The lesson plan template of the National Dance Society SIA Standards-based Lesson Plan Collection can be found here.