 A Creative Process for Dance For some time now, we have struggled to find a honest way to bring Dance alive into our curriculum. This made for a perfect storm because I had a class of "movers" and Dance was almost a need. I guess that these types of curriculum "gap" dilemmas make for the best opportunities to dive right in - sink or swim. The upside is that if it isn't being done and hasn't been done then you have a blank canvas to work with too. Initially, my complete lack of Dance knowledge caused me to hesitate, but this gave way to my favourite thing of late - RESEARCH! Off I set with a mission to educate myself about how I would inspire, educate and enlighten my little bunch of dancers in the making. What unfolded was discovering an unbeknown interest in Dance, the best-loved-UOI of all time by students and a synthesis of some really practical resources for both students and teachers to use and learn from. I hope you enjoy them as much as we did making them. This school year, when we refine our UOI planner, I will post that too, but until then, please enjoy these resources and DARE TO DANCE too.
The Creative Process for Dance
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I've been trying out and thinking of authentic and effective ways to centre Student Voice within our inquiry planning. So when we were about to embark on our Summative Assessment during our first Unit of Inquiry this year I thought, "Aha! This is the perfect opportunity for you Natasha to put this into action." I'm not sure about you, but uncharted waters are where you dive in and have to figure out where your going, how your going, while your going "there" wherever that actually is. But not being one to balk at a challenge, I dived in. A good place to start is by visualizing, asking yourself, "When all my students responses are piled on my desk, what evidence do I want to find within them?"
The overall result was a crisp Summative Assessment which each student owned and was fully engaged in, as well as, clarity for the teacher from the initial question through to how the student's response is connected to the curriculum.
We made further improvements in the new 2013-2014 school year to this unit of inquiry. I've added the file below. 
Leigh Ann and I dreamed up a delightful idea to continue motivating our students and celebrate their writing. Our Young Authors would read their published writing at their very own book launch at our local bookstore!  Our Plan
Students would choose one piece which they believed was an example of their best writing this year. For homework they would work with their parents to edit and type up their piece and email it to us. We would then publish and bind into a book each student’s piece alongside their black and white author’s photo. It would be titled “An Anthology of Year 4 Writing.” The highlight would be receiving their very own copy at their first ever book launch at Borders Bookstore here in Singapore. As published authors they would read an excerpt of their writing to an invited audience made up of their fellow classmates, families and school staff on the Story Time Stage within Borders Bookstore. This would take place in the evening so parents could attend and bring their child and family. It was an absolute thrill to be a fly on the wall in my own classroom watching my students be the stars of their own universe. We had nearly thirty odd vibrant educators visit our school on Tuesday afternoon from Hong Kong's Victoria Shanghai Academy and Singapore's Chatsworth Kindergarten.
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Hi, I am Natasha Hutchins an international teacher collaborating, exploring and sharing ideas with others, like myself from around the world, for our collective professional development and enjoyment of learning and teaching.
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