INTEGRATING DANCE AND WRITING FOR CREATIVE EXPRESSION

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

GRADE BAND: K-1
CONTENT FOCUS: DANCE & ELA
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"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?
  • How can I use the elements of dance to tell a story?

 

Georgia Standards

Curriculum Standards

Kindergarten:

K.T.T.1.c With adult support, demonstrate an understanding of the central message, lesson, or moral of the story based on the words and actions of the main characters.

K.T.T.1.e Use a combination of drawing, labeling, writing, and dictating* to create a text with narrative techniques (e.g., characters, setting, events) told in the order in which they occurred.

 

Grade 1:

1.T.T.1.b Identify a simple plot with a problem and solution.

1.T.T.1.e Use knowledge of narrative techniques (e.g., characters, settings, events) to create texts that share real or imagined experiences and events with a sense of closure.

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

Kindergarten:

ELA.K.OE.2 Acquire, refine, and share knowledge through a variety of multimedia literacies to include written, oral, visual, digital, and interactive texts.

ELA.K.OE.3 Make inferences to support comprehension.

 

Grade 1:

ELA.1.OE.3 Make inferences to support comprehension.

ELA.1.AOR.2 Evaluate and critique the development of themes and central ideas within and across texts.

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?
  • Ask students what they think the dance was about. Ask them what about the dance makes them say that.

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). Focus on one or two, such as locomotor/nonlocomotor and levels.
  • As a class, select a topic for their choreography (this could be inspired by a story that the class has read).
    • Discuss what the topic is (such as the main idea of the story) and the details of the topics (such as the characters, beginning, middle, end, etc.).
  • As a class, develop choreography to express the topic using the one or two elements of dance selected. For example, if using a story, choose a movement for the beginning, middle, and end.
  • Perform the choreography together as a class.
  • Have students illustrate the story of their choreography including the main idea and beginning, middle, and end displayed in the dance.

 

Closing Reflection

  • Students will answer: How did these movements help you understand the main idea/story?
  • Provide time for students to share their illustrations.

 

Assessments

Formative

  • While planning the choreography, ask the students the following questions:
    • What is the main idea?
    • What supporting details/beginning, middle, end are in the choreography?
    • Observe students’ movements for understanding of dance vocabulary.

Summative

  • Student illustrations of the dance
  • Student choreography

 

 

Differentiation

Accelerated: 

  • Divide the class into three groups; each group of students will perform (first grade choreograph) the beginning, middle, or end.

 

Remedial:

  • Focus only on one element of dance, such as levels, in the choreography.
  • Instead of watching a piece of choreography for the activating strategy, read a story that the dance will be about.
  • Choreograph a dance for vocabulary words instead of for the plot of a story.

 

Credits

Ideas contributed by: Melissa Dittmar-Joy. Updated by: Katy Betts

*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

 

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