Curriculum Building - How I Lesson-Plan for the Whole Season Before it Even Starts!
Welcome to the Casual Dance Teachers podcast. I'm your host, Maia. Today, we're gonna be talking about how to map out your curriculum for the entire dance season. I have a lot of tips and tricks to share with you, so let's talk about it. Welcome, and thank you so much for joining me for the first episode ever of the Casual Dance Teachers podcast.
Maia:I'm really excited to share. I did not hold back on this topic. This is quite a doozy. We're talking about mapping out curriculum for an entire season of dance in any genre, any level. I have a process that I've been using for the past few years, and I think that it could really benefit you.
Maia:Before I get into it, I do want to encourage you to join me on Facebook in the Casual Dance Teachers Network, where we can continue the conversation. I can hopefully answer any questions that you have, and maybe you will share some of your tips and tricks with me as well. Now I'm gonna start by giving you a really, really abbreviated version of what my process is, and then I will get into a lot more detail. So here's a super simplified version. Okay.
Maia:So step 1, you are going to do a big brainstorm of everything that you want your students to learn throughout the coming dance season. Step 2, break down your season into manageable units. Any chunk of time that you will be able to apply the same concepts and skills to really be consistent and then move on to something new at the end of the unit. Step 3 is gonna be to go back to your brainstorm, pull out the concepts and skills that you wanna teach, and assign them to the units that make the most sense. And then step 4, once you have those units built, go ahead and start to build your phrase work, your classroom structure, the more detailed parts of the learning process that you'll be applying in the classroom.
Maia:I do wanna start by giving you a couple of sort of caveats for how I'm approaching this to make sure that this applies to you too, because I don't wanna waste anybody's time. So let me just mention a couple things. First of all, I've been with the same studio for the past several years. So at this point, when I'm going into each season, I'm working with students who are, for the most part, familiar to me, and I am working in similar genres year after year. So it makes it a little bit easier, and I'll talk more about that too.
Maia:But if you are entering a brand new studio and you have no idea going into it, kinda where your students are at, don't worry. I'll also give you some tips for that, but just know that not all of this might apply to you in the exact same way. Number 2, I do wanna mention that when I say dance season, like, we're planning our curriculum for the entire dance season, I'm referring to a period from the early fall or late summer until late December, typically when we break for the holidays. Then when we come back from holiday break, typically I'm getting into choreography. And I'm excited to talk about that too, but in another episode.
Maia:There is not enough time to talk about all of that in this episode. So, again, this can really apply to whatever your season or your year or even a summer session is, but know that when I'm talking about the dance season, that's what I'm referring to. I'm not referring to necessarily trying to teach students choreography within this particular system. The last thing that I wanna mention is that I do know that a lot of studios have set curriculum that they use, which I think is fantastic. But as a casual dance teacher, I've never worked for a studio that had that.
Maia:If you already have a set curriculum and standards and rules that you need to follow as an educator in your studio, this probably won't apply to you. But please stick around for another episode because I might be talking to you in the future. Okay? So those are kind of where I'm coming from, what my prior experience is that has given me the framework to put all of this together and share it with you. With all of that said, you are probably ready to start hearing a little bit more about the actual process itself.
Maia:So let me get into that. Starting with the brainstorm, and this is really the big daunting part of this process. But I want to assure you, once you're consistently with a studio or just consistently teaching a similar style and level of dance, you do not have to redo the brainstorm every time. It helps to do it when you're starting out with a new class, and then you can kinda start to just shape it and update it over time as you move forward with the same students or with the same level and style of dance. Here's how I do the brainstorming.
Maia:I have a very specific process, and it might seem like overkill to a lot of you, but for me, it just really helps me get in the mindset and make sure that I am serving my students with exactly what it is that they need to succeed. I take out a paper and pencil, very old fashioned. I have a binder. I keep this all in. You can do whatever works for you.
Maia:I'm not saying you have to do paper and pencil, but that is my system. So I get out a paper and pencil, and on a piece of paper, I write 4 columns at the top. Column 1 is steps that my students are very familiar and comfortable with. So I'm gonna use the example of ballet here just because that is one of the styles that I teach. My students know plie very well.
Maia:I'm not typically going to have to circle back and teach them how to do a plie, but I'm still gonna write it down on this list for a couple of reasons. Okay. Number 1, when you get this list of all of the steps that your students know, particularly if you've been teaching them for a few years and that's all attributed to you, it's very encouraging and motivating to look at that and say, oh my gosh, look at what I've taught them, look at what they know. We get so fixated on what they don't know and can't do well. I think it's so valuable to start out the year in this mindset of celebrating what the students know.
Maia:And then especially early in the season, you can just go through those really, really quickly as a quick review, and it empowers the students and makes them feel ready to take on the new stuff that they're not as comfortable with. Okay. So column 1, I'm writing down everything that they know and are comfortable with and can do well already. Column 2 is going to be steps that they already know but might not be as comfortable with, so they might need some more work. So, for example, pirouettes for a lot of ballet dancers could be something that they may have been introduced to briefly or started some foundational work on, but haven't mastered yet or haven't even fully achieved yet.
Maia:That would go in column 2. Column 3, brand new steps that the students have had no exposure to whatsoever. If you're working with beginner students or even intermediate students, column 3 might be your longest column. That's gonna be a lot, and you have no obligation to teach them every single thing on this list. Just know that.
Maia:Remember that this is a brainstorm. Okay? You can put as much on this list as you possibly can think of, And then later in the process, which we will get to, you will start to pinpoint the things that are most important to teach the students by the end of the season. So don't be shy. Write down anything you can.
Maia:If you have more advanced students, it might actually be hard to fill out this list. You might struggle a little bit to come up with a whole bunch of things that they don't know yet. But I wouldn't worry too much about it. If you want to kinda go down the rabbit hole and start looking into concert dance, That might be a good example where you can grab things out of it to put on this list or literature, glossaries, indexes that will give you ideas for steps to add to this, by all means do that. But when you're in the brainstorming phase, I would say don't be too hard on yourself.
Maia:Keep it open to what's in your brain. Write down the things in whatever column they fit with as you go. You don't have to do 1 column at a time, and you can always come back and revise this. Okay? So let's get to column 4, and this is a fun one.
Maia:This is where you're going to write down bigger picture skills, such as musicality, for example. It's not a step that you can teach. It's not something you can say, okay. They know it. Now we're done.
Maia:We're gonna move on. Write down in column 4 any of these bigger picture things that you can think of that the students might need to work on. Stage presence, artistry, musicality, porta bra. Any of these things can go in column 4. And once you have a nice healthy list, you've brainstormed, you feel like you've put a lot down on paper, you're feeling good, it's time to move on.
Maia:Remember, you can always come back to this. You can edit it, you can reference it, you can update it. And once you've done it once, if you go back the next year, no, you do not have to start from scratch and do it all over again. You can use the same list, but just make sure that you still give yourself some time to brainstorm because that's where the motivation and the passion to really teach your students to the best of your ability is going to come from, is this little brainstorming session right here before the season even starts, before you even set foot in the classroom. Let's talk about step 2.
Maia:Step 2 is where you break up your season into units, and this can be pretty easy. So I'll tell you my quick trick for making this happen is that I do 1 month units. Now that's not always gonna work. So let me talk about it a little bit more just to clarify that I really, really like to do a new unit for each new month, starting on the 1st week of the month until the last week of the month, we're gonna be working on consistent material within those units. Again, depending on how your season is structured, this is not necessarily always going to work.
Maia:And if you're doing a shorter season and you're trying to apply these same steps, you might wanna think about doing shorter units. But I would say if you're seeing students once a week and you see them 4 weeks within the month, that's a really great number to break up your units into. 4 weeks seems to be enough time to stay consistent, to hit those goals over and over again, but you're not going on and on hitting them too much that they're going to get bored. A couple other reasons why I like to keep the units to a month is because for the student's own mindset, if they're really struggling or don't like a unit, and they know that once the first of a new month comes around, they get to mentally reset and they get to work on some new things, they might be more motivated too. You might see better results from them.
Maia:And lastly, I just personally love a theme. Any theme, choreography, costumes, classes, games, give me a theme. I love it. So if I'm doing months and we're in that phase from fall to winter, one of my months is gonna be Halloween, hello, October, all Halloween music, all Halloween themed combinations and things. I love it.
Maia:I get into it. My students like it too. Then we get into December. We're going to be doing Christmas and holiday themed for the whole month long. That's just me personally.
Maia:You can do whatever you want to do. But that's another motivating factor for my students. They know that they're going to get to do Christmas unit in December, and they're looking forward to it, and they know it's going to be fun, and they're not worried about what steps they're going to be doing, what's going to be challenging for them or any of that. They're just looking forward to listening to Christmas music and having a good time. So these are all motivating things that I think about keeping it to a month is really easy.
Maia:Then my students actually know that a new unit is coming, but you don't have to tell them. You can break it up into 4 week chunks in whatever 4 week sessions work for you. You can break it up into 3 week chunks or longer chunks or whatever you want. But go through your calendar, say, okay. This is when unit 1 starts.
Maia:This is when it ends. This is when unit 2 starts, this is when it ends. That's all step 2 is about. Okay? Define your units.
Maia:There you go. You've done step 2. You're ready for step 3. And once you've done steps 1 and 2, step 3 should be pretty easy. Start with your brainstorm column 4.
Maia:So remember column 4 is where you wrote down those big picture things. Right? I'm using musicality as my example for you guys because I know that's gonna apply to every single style of dance. There's no style where that's not going to be a relevant example. So let's say musicality, we're focusing on it.
Maia:Now I do wanna say, you could work on musicality for the entire season or the entire year. That's no problem. You do not have to assign a new big picture goal to every unit if you don't feel like that's appropriate for your set of dancers and your class. I like to have a different big picture item for each unit. So I'll have approximately 4 units in my season from fall to winter, and each unit gets one of these bigger overarching concepts assigned to it.
Maia:So even though I'm not necessarily telling my students, okay, this is the musicality unit, guys, we're gonna work on musicality. When I'm going into the classroom and I'm building the material for the class, everything I do is gonna be focused on musicality. I'm gonna be introducing some different rhythms to them. I'm gonna be possibly introducing polyrhythm. I'm going to be working on filling out the entire note and or the entire measure with every single movement, making sure they're filling up that music.
Maia:Okay? So, again, I don't have to deliberately say, everything we're doing is about musicality right now, guys, but it's just in my intent stepping into the classroom. And that's where it takes that imposter syndrome. It takes that stress out of it because I know I have an intent. I know I'm getting them to a goal.
Maia:That's where this system has helped me so much. So I'll start with the big picture. Okay? You have 4 week units or whatever they are. You have all of these big concepts that you know your dancers can improve upon, and you just assign 1 to each unit.
Maia:And then go to columns 1, 2, and 3. I personally like to go in reverse order. So start with column 3. These are the brand new steps I need my students to know by the end of the year. Because that's probably what you have to spend the most time on, right, is the stuff that's brand new to them.
Maia:Assign a couple of them to each unit. So you know they're learning something brand new and consistently going to be working on it for several weeks within each unit. Next, go to column 2. Fill in, okay, these are the things that they already know, but we still have to be working on them along with the new stuff. And then you can assign column 1 to units.
Maia:You might not have to. It might just come naturally. So don't stress too much about assigning. This is where for those of us that might struggle to come up with combinations or to come up with a nice barre stretch, for example, or a nice warm up in the center or progressions, because we feel like we're getting stuck in doing the same material over and over again, not utilizing enough new stuff. If you have it down on paper visually, I promise you this is gonna help so much.
Maia:It has really, really helped me. If you want to take it a step further at this point, you can. Because the next step, like I said, is building that warm up, building your progressions, building the combinations that will teach all of these skills and these bigger picture concepts and all of that. Everyone's different. I personally am not at all the teacher that will step in with no plan and make it up as I go, which you probably have gathered if you've listened to this so far because, hello, everything is spelled out, everything has a system, everything has a step.
Maia:That's how I like to be for pretty much everything. And the more you listen to this podcast, the more you're going to realize that. But that's kind of what I'm hoping will help those of you that are a little more off the cuff because I really could learn a lot from you off the cuff people, but I have to have a plan or, again, the ideas will just swell to become so much and so overwhelming that I can't narrow it down to what's going to help my students the best. So here's where you need to determine who you are as a dance teacher. Are you off the cuff?
Maia:Because then you're probably fine to just have a general map of what your bigger picture goals and your specific skills and vocabulary are within each unit, and then you can kind of go in and build it as you go. That's fine. If you are not that kind of person and you have to have a plan going into every single class period, then build those lesson plans off of these lists. Okay? You know, you have to teach this new vocabulary, incorporate this existing vocabulary, and make it fit within the theme of musicality.
Maia:There you go. It's a lot easier to build a combination like that with those parameters and rules than it is to just say, oh, I have to build a combination for this class. At this point, I've been teaching long enough that I can kind of do a combination of both. Again, I really, really like to have a plan. I do typically tend to create individual lesson plans for every class that I teach.
Maia:But we're casual dance teachers. Right? For most of us, this is not our full time job. So there's gonna be weeks where things come up and you just do not have the time or the energy to make a full lesson plan for every class. It's gonna happen.
Maia:So if you have this plan set ahead of time, it makes it so much easier. I know I've said that a lot, but it just takes the stress and the onus off of us that there's not going to be a week when we step into the studio having no idea what we're supposed to be teaching these students. We always know. So even on the weeks where life gets in the way, where it's just too much, we're not feeling well, we had a doozy of a week, whatever it may be, We're coming into the studio. Okay.
Maia:I at least know I'm gonna work on these couple of things. I'm gonna do activities that have to do with this concept, help the students improve with this. You're gonna be fine. You're never gonna be stuck and have no idea what to do. That's where this is really going to help you.
Maia:A couple last tips that I'll share with you. Remember within your units to stay consistent. One of the things I really struggled with as a newer dance teacher was, again, worrying that the students would get bored. And I felt like I had to reinvent the wheel every single class. I was constantly coming in with new material.
Maia:And that's really not that great. I'm sorry. It's just not as effective as being consistent and coming in and working on the same steps again and again. Now you can work on them in new ways. You don't want it to be boring.
Maia:But this is why we have curriculum. This is why some people pay big bucks for set curriculums that other people have made because that consistency creates results. And as casual dance teachers that are working really hard to serve our students just as well as the pre professional and the full time students and the hardcore competitive dancers. These students are going to benefit from having consistency. So you do not have to reinvent the wheel every week.
Maia:Think about your units, keep similar material within the unit. When you move on to a new unit, you can still use similar material. Just change it up a little bit. Just apply a few new concepts. This will be better, not only for you, but for your students as well.
Maia:Now I promised if you stuck with me I would give some tips for those of you that are starting in a brand new studio that might have no prior knowledge of what vocabulary and skills your students do already know. So how do you do step 1, the brainstorming, if you don't even know where you're starting from? Easy. And this can even go if you're at the same studio teaching the same level, but you just happen to have a bunch of new students. Make your first unit an assessment unit.
Maia:So this is where you can still do the brainstorming before you start the season and write down what you think, what your expectations are of the students, the things that you want to teach them that you assume would be appropriate for that level. This way you're not going into the studio again blind on day 1. Create an assessment unit where every week you are throwing a bunch of new things at them. Some things maybe prepare to teach really fast to test how quickly they can pick them up and how well they know them, and other things prepare to teach slower and really give them time to show you their technique. Over those first few weeks of testing and assessing, it'll become really clear what they know, what they need more work on, what they haven't been introduced to yet, And then you can go back to that initial brainstorm, update as needed, and real quick assign your units to fit the class that you're working with.
Maia:So it's okay if you're brand new to a certain studio to still use this process and take the 1st couple weeks to really define your objectives. If you are working with the same set of students or a similar set of students, I would encourage you to jump into step 1, the brainstorming, right after your recital or as soon as your year or dance season ends. This is when the ideas are gonna be most fresh in your brain. So it's actually less work for you. It might seem like, I just finished the season.
Maia:I need a break. I don't wanna be thinking about next season. But it's actually a lot easier even if you're backstage at the recital or you're at dress rehearsal and you have this idea, oh, man, I just saw them do this. I know they really need to work on that more. I wish they they could work on it more before the recital.
Maia:There's nothing you can do before the recital. Just enjoy it. Just revel in what they're doing well and their accomplishments from this year. Don't take anything away from that. But go ahead and jot down, okay, for next year they need to work on this.
Maia:Okay, for next year we're gonna do a whole unit on getting their weight down into the floor more. Whatever it is. Making those notes when they're still fresh in your mind at the end of the season, again, will make it much easier for you to go into the next season with appropriate goals for that class. So wherever you're starting from, yes, this process can work for you. Be consistent, have fun with it, put your own flair on it.
Maia:And, hey, join me on Facebook in the Casual Dance Teachers Network and let me know how it goes. I would love to hear from you. Before we close, I do have a few thank yous to share, including to GB Mystical for my amazing theme music at the beginning of the episode, as well as to my family, my former dance teachers, and my current studio owner that I work for for giving me all of these skills, encouraging me to share them with others, and helping me through this whole podcasting process, which has been a lot of fun and quite a learning curve for me. At the end of every episode, I do want to close with an inspirational quote that will hopefully help you go into the week feeling refreshed, rejuvenated, and ready to teach. And, of course, for our first episode, I had to start with one of my all time favorites from Isadora Duncan.
Maia:You were wild ones. Don't let them tame you.
