About my classroom
Ballet Instruction
Children's Division
These classes are separated by age. 18 month old children have a grown-up and me class, age 2 has a 30 min class, and ages 3-7 have 45 min classes. I separate each class into 4 sections: circle stretch/warm up, ballet barre/stationary steps, locomotive steps, creative movement. Because I teach for all ages across the span of Children's division, I have a specific set of class plans which build according to child development and skill mastery. For example, the warm up we perform in pre ballet 2 follows the same structure as the warm up for pre-ballet 6, but the stretches build in difficulty as well as in depth of creative imagination expression and follow the tradjectory of physical/emotional/social development aspects as the warm up evolves across the years. Additionally, for our creative movement at the end, our games focus on development of similar skills (spacial awareness, hand eye coordination, physical ability) but become increasingly challenging or involved as the ages progress. For example, in working on spacial awareness, in pre ballet 2, children may perform the "Bubble dance" where they are to dance around the space and when the music stops they clap and fall to the floor, "popping" the bubble. In pre ballet 6, dancers may be asked to stand on circle dots of different colors where only certain colors dance at a time, and they must travel in and out of their friends frozen on the dots, using |
Education Department
My role in the education department as a teaching artist has given me the opportunity to work with the Adaptive Dance program at PBT. This program is a dance class designed for students and adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder and other sensory sensitivities. I began as a teacher assistant in this class and within a year had been moved to co-teacher faculty. We have since expanded our program to include three separate classes, grades 1-5, 6-12, and adults. This program focuses on several aspects of physical and cognitive development affected by sensory sensibilities. We have to take an individual approach towards instruction in this class both with our class plans and teaching strategies, due to the variety in diverse disorders. |
Photo: Kelly Perkovich, PBT School
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