Welcome to our new series of posts for teachers who want to include movement/dance in their classrooms. This is the second post in the series. Feel free to take a look at the first post HERE. Our goal is to inspire teachers to use simple dance moves with their students to help them get to know each other as the school year starts. 

The initial idea for what we are calling #RDTlessonplanofthemonth emerged from a joint teacher workshop held this past January in tandem with Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company. In the forum discussion, many teachers voiced their desire for more frequent lesson plan ideas to assist in their teaching and to avoid “burnout.”

This year, using the blog as a landing page, RDT will present one, quick and fun lesson plan each month geared toward Jr. and Sr. High School Dance Teachers, but by no means limited to that group. In each post you can expect an RDT Dancer or Artistic Staff to present a dance idea with video and a brief written explanation. 

We hope to inspire creativity and lead you to take the lesson plan to many levels. We also want to encourage you to share your results with us! Please post comments, videos, new ideas based on the original plan, etc. You can post at the hashtag #RDTlessonplanofthemonth. As a perk for your participation, you are eligible for a FREE Master Class if you post 3 or more times! Details to be announced in the next post.

Enjoy! And, again, please feel free to provide feedback and make suggestions below in the forum. Also, join us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter if you’d like to post pictures or video of your work with students.

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This is a simple across-the-floor combination from RDT dancer Lauren Curley in 7/4 time.  In the video you will see:

1) a version of the combination to counts

2) the combination danced to a slow song

3) the combination to faster music.

The music selections used for each version is listed in the video. Enjoy!