Primary School Dance Key Stage 2 (7-11 Years)

Written and compiled by Val Sabin

This most comprehensive and user-friendly teaching manual contains a complete, progressive scheme of work for dance for Key Stage 2. It is complete with its own specially composed and arranged music on 6 CDs. The 19 units of work each have 6 to 10 lesson plans providing 137 lesson plans in total that progress and develop 49 dances using 195 tracks of music.

The teaching guide gives practical and definite guidance on planning, teaching styles and strategies, choosing and using stimuli for dance, and suggestions for additional forms of accompaniment. It describes the movement material or language of dance, examines the essential aspects of composing, performing and appreciating, and describes how dances are made. Dance activities appropriate for each age group are linked to National Curriculum requirements. Minimum Expected Standards are identified and assessment sheets provided.

The detailed teaching material has been organised to form a complete and detailed scheme comprising 4 units of creative dance for each year group (each unit contains between 6 and 10 lesson plans). In addition to these units there is a Traditional and Historical section at the back of the manual containing units of English Country Dance and Tudor Dance suitable for all year groups. Every creative dance is preceded by a page giving a brief description of the dance, stimuli and suggested resources. (There are 67 pages of photocopiable resources in the appendices, in the form of cards, pictorial stimuli, text and poems). In addition, there are suggestions on how the dances may be further extended, developed and enriched.

The whole scheme has been written to develop children’s knowledge, skills and understanding, in a progressive manner. Learning Objectives, Expected Learning Outcomes and dance frameworks clarify planning and focus learning. The lesson plans are written in great detail so they can be used immediately as they stand or adapted to suit the expertise or teaching style of the teacher or the attitude and ability of the class.

The lesson plans have been tried and tested, however, the rate at which individual classes progress may be very different. Whatever the rate of progress there will always be more than enough material in each lesson plan for one lesson and indeed, in some cases, could be extended to 2 or even 3 lessons.

The dances arose from a wide range of stimuli including tactile, characters, masks, story, legend, poems, words, music, sport, natural occurrence, forms of greeting, social, moral and environmental issues etc. These dances encourage children to respond to a range of stimuli, improvise freely, acquire and develop specific dance skills, select and apply appropriate movements to express dance ideas. Children are also encouraged to understand, develop and use a range of compositional ideas, develop their use of relationships with others and group organisation, improve both their own and others’ work and understand the value of “getting ready” and “ending” activities.

The music includes a range of cultural rhythms, pop, reggae, rap, ethereal, lyrical, sound effects, music that tells a story etc. and is presented in a user-friendly way. If there are several sections to a dance the sections are presented individually on tracks for ease of practise as well as in the composite form of the complete dance. This enables the reader to isolate the section for practice and also means that any one section could be taken out and used to develop a dance which is complete in itself e.g. “interdependence” from “Rainforest” or “colliding snooker balls” from the “Snooker Championship”.

With many thanks to the following people for their invaluable expert contributions:-
Bobby Gargrave (8 creative dances), Ann Hinchcliffe (Tudor Dances), Carolyn Robson (English Country dances).
Music arranged and performed by: Darren Lee, Laura Whittle, Amy Whittle, Jacob Grant, Carolyn Robson, Paul Tabbush, Ann Hinchcliffe, Caroline David, David Holland Gina Holland.