Grades K-2 Progress Points

Students will at the appropriate developmental level:

1. Recognize that people from various times and cultures value and enjoy dancing, making dances and reflecting on dances as distinct human endeavors.
2. Explore a range of dance concepts, genres, forms and styles to construct meaning.
3. Connect kinesthetic awareness and dance making with individual choice and personal cultural identity.
4. Produce informal and formal dances that express experiences, imagination and ideas.
5. Use their own developing language and dance vocabulary to form and express opinions.

Grades 3-5 Progress Points

Students will at the appropriate developmental level:

1. Examine a range of dance forms to gain insight into the historical and cultural traditions of local and global communities.
2. Identify and apply dance concepts and processes to communicate meanings, moods and ideas in personal and collaborative dance works.
3. Demonstrate kinesthetic awareness and understanding of dance concepts when inventing solutions to creative and technical movement challenges.
4. Communicate personal responses to artistic works giving reasons for their interpretations and preferences.
5. Improvise, create and perform movement phrases with concentration and kinesthetic awareness in personal and shared spaces.
6. Provide and use feedback to improve and refine movement explorations.

Grades 6-8 Progress Points

Students will at the appropriate developmental level:

1. Demonstrate increased awareness of how the body moves in the environment and in relation to others.
2. Engage in diverse dance movement genres, forms and styles.
3. Experience relationships between dance, rhythm and musical accompaniment.
4. Use available technology and new media arts to create and record dances in conventional and creative ways.
5. Understand why and how dance is a valuable proficiency for community and career development.
6. Demonstrate safe and healthy dance practices.
7. Reflect on the cultural, collaborative and interdisciplinary functions of dance.
8. Begin to articulate a personal aesthetic and dance preference.
9. Recognize that examining the socio-cultural traditions and historical and political significance of dances deepens personal understanding of their worlds.

Grades 9-12 Progress Points

Students will at the appropriate developmental level:

1. Understand the ways in which dance is a meaningful expression of culture in past and present societies.
2. Inquire about and reflect on the significance and value of dance in their lives and society.
3. Create, interpret and perform dances to demonstrate understanding of choreographic principles, processes and structures.
4. Express orally and in writing their interpretations and evaluations of dances they observe and perform.
5. Create dances that connect to and are inspired by interdisciplinary content.
6. Present points of view about dance and respond thoughtfully to the viewpoints of others.
7. Understand the ways in which technological, financial and human resources impact the creation and performance of dance.