10/10/2017
Topic:
Students With Disabilities
Amy Valerius
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I had a mildly autistic student in my dance class in previous years. They learned at a slower pace than the majority of the class, as well as needed a much more comprehensive review period before learning a new skill. I began to learn when they were becoming "overstimulated" with the music and movement of others in the class. During these times I would pull the student aside and have one of my other students go over the steps one on one. I found that to be an effective way to keep this student engaged without getting frustrated. |
9/2/2018
Topic:
Students With Disabilities
Amy Valerius
|
I have a student in my dance class diagnosed with autism. He has a true affection for dancing and performing, but he prefers to "freestyle" his dance rather than follow the structure of dance class. I have found that providing direct instruction to him on the task at hand works well as he wants to do the steps correctly. He constantly is "telling" me that he did it right and looks for my feedback after he performs new steps. If I give him individual instruction he responds more favorably when I give him a correction on something he needs to fix or improve. |
9/3/2018
Topic:
Tools And Strategies
Amy Valerius
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My favorite strategy to use in my dance classes is to implement differentiated assignments. I will teach the entire class a section of choreography and then break my class into groups according to what I want them to accomplish within that class. One group may be assigned to work on the details of the choreography and to help each other in the group be able to execute the choreography exactly as taught. Another group will be required to enhance their choreography using stylization with the proper body language/ performance quality of the music or specific storyline of the dance. A different group might be working on the musicality of the choreography, making sure they are executing the steps on the proper counts. One of the groups will be working on just learning and being able to remember the choreography taught through repetition. By having the students work in groups with other students working toward the same goal allows them to help each other, and allows me to circulate among the groups and help each group with the individual goals.
A strategy that I am going to try this year will be using semantic maps in my class. I think this will help them make connections between what they already know and what they are learning. Beyond that it will help them realize the importance of a "basic" step and the correlation between it and more complex steps. The students could put a basic step in the center circle and then use the outer circles to identify more difficult steps that require the application of the basic step to execute it properly. |
9/3/2018
Topic:
Assessment Of Learning
Amy Valerius
|
An adaptive assessment I use for my students is scheduling. If I am doing a choreography check to assess the students' mastery of the choreography, I allow my students with disabilities to show me smaller sections of choreography over several days instead of all of it in the same class period. This allows them to show me smaller sections of the choreography at a time, allowing them to remember and demonstrate their knowledge more successfully. They can remember 2 counts of 8 of choreography, but struggle to remember 8 counts of 8 altogether. I have found this to boost their confidence as it provides a better effort to success ratio! |