Saturday, December 14, 2013

Weekly Reflection Paper No. 1 of 10

Calasanz.MelissaAdylia 1
 Saint Mary's College of California
LEAP 198 Senior Project 
Student Supervisor of the Glendale Community College
DANCE 107
Survey of Dance Teaching Methodology Class

Weekly Reflection Paper No. 1
My first assignment as the Assistant to Doran Krannig, Glendale Community College Dance Department Chair, was to observe the DANCE 107 Class and determine how I could best assist Doran as well as the students, in preparing them to complete their first assignment.
By observing the DANCE 107 class, looking over the syllabus, and conferring with Dora, it was determined that the students needed help preparing to complete their first dance lesson plan which would later become part of their end of term Final Project Portfolio.
The students were allowed to choose the style of dance for the dance lesson plan. The style choices were jazz, ballet, hip-hop, modern, and creative movement.  However, since the majority of the students had little to no experience teaching children it was important to educated them on what is suitable for public school children, grades K-12, in terms of appropriate warm up, cool down, and the difficulty of content and movements, as well as the length of choreography. Additionally, each lesson plan needed to incorporate documentation of California Department of Education Dance Standards in relation to the content contained within the dance lesson plan. I determined it would be helpful to locate the most up-to-date resources, referencing the California Department of Education Dance Standards, so the students could become familiar with them and apply them to their lesson plan.
While researching California Department of Education Dance Standards, I found several useful resources for the students: Visual and Performing Arts Framework for California Public Schools Kindergarten Through Grade Twelve http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/cr/cf/documents/vpaframewrk.pdf; California Standards for the Teaching Profession 2009 http://www.ctc.ca.gov/educator-prep/standards/CSTP-2009.pdf ; and most importantly California Department of Education Dance Standards 2013 California State Board of Education Grade Nine Through Twelve-Proficient Visual and Performing Arts: Dance Content Standards http://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/damain.asp.
Once I had completed the research, and gathered the resources that would be of most value to the students as they completed their first assignment, I composed the “Glendale Community College Dance 107 Survey of Dance Teaching Methodology Lesson Plan and Dance Standards Study Guide.”
Though Dora gave me a week to complete this first assignment, I knew many of the students were enthusiastic to begin work on their lesson plan as soon as possible so I took the challenge to have the document completed and available to the students before the start of the next Dance 107 Survey of Dance Teaching Methodology Class. Though this self-imposed challenge only allowed me less and one day to conduct research and to create the study guide, I was thrilled to begin work as her Intern/Assistant, and found the information very useful.
Not only did the research allow me to become familiar with an aspect of dance education that I had no previous knowledge of (the California Department of Education Dance Standards) and how to apply the information to the process of creating a dance lesson plan, the research allowed me the opportunity to become aware that social dances are still included in grade school dance education.
I am happy to report that each student upon completion of their first draft of their first lesson plan, they had each incorporated at least 3 Dance Standards. Next Wednesday they will be submitting the final draft of their first lesson plan which will give up the opportunity to determine if the dance standards included do in fact correspond with the content of their proposed class.

1. Calasanz.MelissaAdylia LEAP 198
Weekly Reflection Paper Senior Project GCC DANCE 107 Internship




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