Written by: Stacey N. Skoning Presented by: Giavonna Saddic and Veronica Badagliacco

Movement and dance in the classroom is when a teacher will teach their students how to connect academic content to specific movements in order to enhance the children’s knowledge of the subject matter as well as increase their memory of what is being taught.

Benefits to using creative writing and dance in classrooms include: Increased student understanding of content Improved classroom behavior Development of new forms of assessment Students who especially benefit from this type of learning are those with: learning disabilities emotional disorders attention deficit disorders cognitive disabilities gifts and talents

Integrating active learning will meet the needs of a variety of learners, especially kinesthetic learners Many teachers remain focused on verbal/linguistic and logical/mathematical intelligences and cater to auditory & visual learners However, students with disabilities do not usually have strengths in those areas They may have stronger skills in musical, visual, or kinesthetic intelligences

Tortora found that dance is a powerful and successful treatment approach even with “the most difficult-to-reach children” Werner revealed that integrating dance in math and science classes significantly increased positive attitudes toward those subjects Grant stated that the physical movement in the classroom caused such a strong attraction for the young child

Dance and movement will help children be able to concentrate better and have more fun when learning As a teacher, you will not need to know how to dance to get the children active and moving around in the classroom Connecting school content to different moves will help the children associate the information with the motion that you teach them According to this research, it is guaranteed that your students will be more interested and engaged in the lesson

3MxWJ7tY

Would you ever use movement or dance to facilitate learning in the classroom? Would you encourage families to learn science by incorporating dance/creative arts?

Skoning, S. N. (2008). Movement and Dance in the Inclusive Classroom. TEACHING Exceptional Children Plus, 4(6),