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 G R A D E S   K - 4
NA-D.K-4.1 IDENTIFYING AND DEMONSTRATING MOVEMENT ELEMENTS AND SKILLS IN PERFORMING DANCE
Achievement Standard, Proficient:
  • Students accurately demonstrate nonlocomotor/axial movements (such as bend, twist, stretch, swing)
  • Students accurately demonstrate eight basic locomotor movements (such as walk, run, hop, jump, leap, gallop, slide, and skip), traveling forward, backward, sideward, diagonally, and turning
  • Students create shapes at low, middle, and high levels
  • Students demonstrate the ability to define and maintain personal space
  • Students demonstrate movements in straight and curved pathways
  • Students demonstrate accuracy in moving to a musical beat and responding to changes in tempo
  • Students demonstrate kinesthetic awareness, concentration, and focus in performing movement skills
  • Students attentively observe and accurately describe the action (such as skip, gallop) and movement elements (such as levels, directions) in a brief movement study
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NA-D.K-4.2 UNDERSTANDING CHOREOGRAPHIC PRINCIPLES, PROCESSES, AND STRUCTURES
Achievement Standard, Proficient:
  • Students create a sequence with a beginning, middle, and end, both with and without a rhythmic accompaniment; identify each of these parts of the sequence
  • Students improvise, create, and perform dances based on their own ideas and concepts from other sources
  • Students use improvisation to discover and invent movement and to solve movement problems
  • Students create a dance phrase, accurately repeat it, and then vary it (making changes in the time, space, and/or force/energy)
  • Students demonstrate the ability to work effectively alone and with a partner
  • Students demonstrate the following partner skills: copying, leading and following, mirroring
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NA-D.K-4.3 UNDERSTANDING DANCE AS A WAY TO CREATE AND COMMUNICATE MEANING
Achievement Standard, Proficient:
  • Students observe and discuss how dance is different from other forms of human movement (such as sports, everyday gestures)
  • Students take an active role in a class discussion about interpretations of and reactions to a dance
  • Students present their own dances to peers and discuss their meanings with competence and confidence
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NA-D.K-4.4 APPLYING AND DEMONSTRATING CRITICAL AND CREATIVE THINKING SKILLS IN DANCE
Achievement Standard, Proficient:
  • Students explore, discover, and realize multiple solutions to a given movement problem; choose their favorite solution and discuss the reasons for that choice
  • Students observe two dances and discuss how they are similar and different in terms of one of the elements of dance by observing body shapes, levels, pathways
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NA-D.K-4.5 DEMONSTRATING AND UNDERSTANDING DANCE IN VARIOUS CULTURES AND HISTORICAL PERIODS
Achievement Standard, Proficient:
  • Students perform folk dances from various cultures with competence and confidence
  • Students learn and effectively share a dance from a resource in their own community; describe the cultural and/or historical context
  • Students accurately answer questions about dance in a particular culture and time period (for example: In colonial America, why and in what settings did people dance? What did the dances look like?)
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NA-D.K-4.6 MAKING CONNECTIONS BETWEEN DANCE AND HEALTHFUL LIVING
Achievement Standard, Proficient:
  • Students identify at least three personal goals to improve themselves as dancers
  • Students explain how healthy practices (such as nutrition, safety) enhance their ability to dance, citing multiple examples
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NA-D.K-4.7 MAKING CONNECTIONS BETWEEN DANCE AND OTHER DISCIPLINES
Achievement Standard, Proficient:
  • Students create a dance project that reveals understanding of a concept or idea from another discipline (such as pattern in dance and science)
  • Students respond to a dance using another art form; explain the connections between the dance and their response to it (such as stating how their paintings reflect the dance they saw)
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