Minute Masterclass Episode 134

Welcome to your one-minute masterclass. I’m Andrea Trench, founder of DiscoverDance and creator of the Foundations Course for Early Childhood Dance Educators and the DiscoverDance Experience Membership. Today, we are talking about how to teach the BrainDance. Because the BrainDance is so versatile this is where I encourage you to include much of the technical training and dance vocabulary learning. If you are creating a ballet class, you will teach a Ballet BrainDance that includes ballet terminology. If you’re teaching a hip hop class you will use upbeat music and movement for age appropriate hip hop development, same for tap, jazz, and acro. 

This warm-up should be repeated until the majority of the class has mastered the pattern activity presented. Rather than changing the entire BrainDance at once, consider changing 1-2 pattern activities at a time. Take the lead from observing your classes. As long as they are participating fully, keep it the same. If you begin to see off task behavior, consider adding novelty to give them something new to process. If you are a conceptual teacher and intentional about your descriptive guidance, you will be putting emphasis on the concept of the lesson of the day already, therefore creating novelty within the same weekly activities. For more information, to enroll in the Foundations Course or join the DiscoverDance Experience, visit DiscoverDance.com.