MOVING WORDS: INTEGRATING DANCE AND WRITING FOR CREATIVE EXPRESSION
Learning Description
Integrating dance and choreography into writing can enhance the narrative by adding dynamic expression, rhythm, and movement to the storytelling process. The purpose of integration is for students to watch dance and use context clues to identify the main idea and supporting details. Students will also use brainstorming, identifying a main idea and supporting details, as a device to create choreography.
Learning Targets
"I Can" Statements
“I Can…”
- I can identify the main idea and supporting details in a text, conversation, or performance to better understand and explain its overall message.
- I can use the main idea and supporting details to create choreography.
Essential Questions
- How can identifying the main idea and supporting details in choreography enhance our understanding and interpretation of a dance performance?
Georgia Standards
Curriculum Standards
Grade 4:
4.T.T.1.c Identify and describe common themes in texts (e.g., good vs. evil) that are revealed through details about characters.
4.T.T.1.e Apply narrative techniques (e.g., character, setting, problem, resolution, and dialogue) to develop a real or imagined experience using descriptive details, clear event sequences, and a conclusion.
Grade 5:
5.T.T.1.b Analyze how setting, events, conflict, and characterization contribute to the plot.
5.T.T.1.e Apply narrative techniques (e.g., character, setting, conflict, climax, resolution, and dialogue) to develop a real or imagined experience using descriptive details, clear event sequences, and a conclusion.
Arts Standards
ESD.CR.1 Demonstrate an understanding of the choreographic process.
ESD.CR.2 Demonstrate an understanding of dance as a form of communication.
ESD.RE.1 Demonstrate critical and creative thinking in dance
ESD.CN.1 Identify connections between dance and other areas of knowledge.
South Carolina Standards
Curriculum Standards
Grade 4:
ELA.4.OE.3 Make inferences to support comprehension.
ELA.4.AOR.6.1 Summarize a text to enhance comprehension:
a. include plot, theme, and relevant key details for a literary text; and b. include a central idea and relevant supporting details for an informational text.
Grade 5:
ELA.5.OE.3 Make inferences to support comprehension.
ELA.5.AOR.1 Evaluate and critique key literary elements that enhance and deepen meaning within and across texts.
ELA.5.AOR.6.1 Summarize a text to enhance comprehension:
a. include plot, theme, and relevant key details for a literary text; and b. include a central idea and relevant supporting details for an informational text.
Arts Standards
Anchor Standard 1: I can use movement exploration to discover and create artistic ideas and works.
Anchor Standard 2: I can choreograph a dance.
Anchor Standard 3: I can perform movements using the dance elements.
Anchor Standard 5: I can describe, analyze, and evaluate a dance.
Key Vocabulary
Content Vocabulary
- Author – A writer of a book, article, or report
- Main idea – The main idea is the central point or message of a text
- Supporting detail – The statements that support (go along with) the main idea
- Setting – The place or type of surroundings where something is positioned or where an event takes place
- Character – A person in a novel, play, or movie
Arts Vocabulary
- Choreography: The art of designing and arranging sequences of movements, steps, and gestures to create a dance piece
- Choreographer – The person who designs or creates a dance piece
- Body – The dancer’s body and how it is used
- Types of energy:
- Percussive – Refers to the quality of movement characterized by sharp starts and stops;staccato jabs of energy
- Suspended – Occurs in a moment of resistance to gravity, such as the instant in which a dancer hangs in space at the top of a leap
- Sustained – Smooth and unaccented; there is not apparent start or stop, only a continuity of energy
- Swinging – Established by a fall of gravity, a gain in momentum, a loss of momentum,and the repeated cycle of fall and recovery, like that of a pendulum
- Vibratory – A quality of movement characterized by rapidly repeated bursts of percussive movements like “a jitter”
- Space:
- Level – One of the aspects of movement (there are three basic levels in dance: high,middle, and low)
- Pathway – Designs traced on the floor as a dancer travels across space; the designs traced in the air as a dancer moves various body parts
- Shape – Refers to an interesting and interrelated arrangement of body parts of one dancer; the visual makeup or molding of the body parts of a singular dancer; the overall visible appearance of a group of dancers
- Time:
- Tempo – Refers to the pace or speed of movement
- Action:
- Locomotor – A movement that travels through space
- Non-locomotor – A movement that does not travel through space
Materials
- A selected piece of choreography to watch
- Brainstorm planning bubbles or concept map
- Music
- Paper and pencils
Instructional Design
Opening/Activating Strategy
- Discuss the similarities between a choreographer and an author, such as how both are creators and storytellers.
- Watch a selected piece of choreography.
- Have students identify the story elements in the choreography–who are the characters? What is the setting? What was the beginning, middle, and end?
- Have students identify the main idea and supporting details in the choreography.
- Have students infer what the choreography was about using supporting details from the choreography.
Work Session
- As a whole group, discuss how choreographers plan choreography just how writers brainstorm for their writing/essay.
- Practice a brainstorm for choreography together exploring different types of movements, levels, and energy qualities (see Arts Vocabulary).
- Break students into small groups.
- Assign or have groups select a main idea/topic for their choreography.
- Have students brainstorm for their choreography using a concept map, web, brainstorming bubbles, or other type of strategy.
- Remind students to keep in mind the elements of dance: body, action, space, time, and energy, and how they can be used to help express their thoughts/ideas (see Arts Vocabulary).
- For younger students, focus on a limited number of elements.
- Have students create and share their choreography.
- Have students write and/or illustrate the story of their choreography including the main idea and supporting details displayed in the dance.
- Stories should have characters, setting, and a beginning, middle, and end.
Closing Reflection
- After watching each group's choreography, the audience (class) will identify the movements they saw in the choreography that were the supporting details of the main idea of the choreography.
- Students will answer: How did these movements help you understand the main idea/story?
Assessments
Formative
- While groups are working on choreography, ask the students questions about their choreography and choreographic choices.
- What is the main idea?
- What supporting details are in your choreography?
- Have them demonstrate them to you.
Summative
- Ask the choreographers to tell you or write about their choreographic process and how they selected the movements.
- Have students write or illustrate the story of their choreography including the main idea and supporting details displayed in the dance.
- Stories should have characters, setting, and a beginning, middle, and end.
Differentiation
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Accelerated:
Remedial:
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Credits
Ideas contributed by: Melissa Dittmar-Joy.
*This integrated lesson provides differentiated ideas and activities for educators that are aligned to a sampling of standards. Standards referenced at the time of publishing may differ based on each state’s adoption of new standards.
Revised and copyright: May 2025 @ ArtsNOW