TEACHING CHILDREN AND TYPES OF DANCE 

Getting ready for dance

As adults, we often mistake children for being indestructible when it comes to exercise-related injuries and niggles. However, it's important to teach children about having a proper warm-up and cool-down routine so that they can avoid these problems when they grow older.

If you’re getting ready for dance lessons with your class, you’ll need to ensure they’re nice and warmed-up! This makes the chance of injury from the exercise much smaller, and means they will be able to perform the moves to the best of their ability.

Take a look at this warm-up below. Your KS1 class will perform three different types of activities: warm-up games, aerobic warm-ups and stretches. This gives you plenty of options to tailor the warm-up to the abilities of your class. Why not let a different child lead the warm-up session each week?

Teaching dance in primary school

Have you heard of Twinkl Move? It’s an ever-growing treasure trove of PE planning materials that include schemes of work, lesson plans, PowerPoint presentations, non-participation materials, assessment grids and CPD resources - all aligned to the national curriculum.

There are lots of dance schemes of work with fun themes and activities that your classes will love

Types of dance movements and terms for children

Read on to discover some different types of dance movements and the definition of commonly used dance terms.

Air steps - Steps or kicks performed in the air after being lifted from the ground by a partner.

Breakaway - Section within a dance where partners separate and improvise dance steps on their own.

Canon - A dance technique that involves two or more dancers performing the same action one after the other. The action is staggered, like a Mexican wave.

Climax - The most significant part of a dance.

Dynamics - How the body performs particular movements to express the mood or the tone of the dance. Dynamics can refer to the speed, energy or flow of movements in a performance. For example, a movement can be performed energetically or lazily, quickly or slowly, and flowing or jagged. The different dynamics will affect the 'feel' of the dance.

Expression - Performers can express emotions through their dance. The performer's expression of these emotions can come through their actions of their facial expressions.

Improvise - When improvising, dancers create movements and actions spontaneously, without rehearsal. They use music or other stimuli as inspiration and develop their actions 'on the spot'.

Levels - Dancing at different levels is a great way to add interest to a dance. Level refers to the height of the dancer in relation to the floor. For example, stretching up would be high-level, crouching would be mid-level and sitting or lying down would be low-level.

Mirror - When mirroring, dancers perform the same actions at the same time but using opposite body parts so that it appears that the action is being reflected in a mirror.

Mood - The 'feel' of a dance created by deliberate combinations and expressions of movement.

Motif - A movement phrase that represents a theme or idea.

Movement Phrase - A short sequence of connected actions that has a sense of thematic completion.

One-step - A ballroom dance with simple footwork which originated in the early twentieth century. It's usually danced to ragtime music (music with ragged timing).

Precision - When performing actions, it's important for dancers to show precision. This means they perform their actions sharply, clearly and accurately so that the audience can clearly see what the dancer is doing.

Rhythm - In dance, rhythm refers to the timing of the movements in a particular dance. When performing to music, it's important that the rhythm of the dance matches the rhythm of the music. This means that the timing of the movements matches the timing of the sounds within the music.

Strut - To walk in a proud or arrogant manner with and exaggerated, stiff gait.

Unison - A dance technique that can be used by two or more dancers. When dancing in unison, the dancers perform exactly the same actions at exactly the same time.

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