Dance integration into a sixth-grade science curriculum

A sixth-grade science curriculum was developed for the California State Content standards 6.0 a-g, concerning the geologic processes responsible for the movement and features of the earth, all using dance integration as the primary teaching strategy. It was the aim of this project to use dance integration as an alternative to the text and worksheet model, previously the primary method for teaching science. Dance provided the author with another tool for expressing and meeting California's science standards because it promoted embodied knowing. It allowed embodied knowing to occur through repetitive physical movement with an assigned meaning attached. As a result, this strategy provided students with the opportunity to make emotional connections to the scientific material they were learning, employ a unique study strategy, and gain conceptual understanding for the scientific phenomena about which they were learning. The author witnessed student achievement increase in the subject area of science, demonstrated by students' proper use of academic language related to plate boundaries, their ability to infer and deduce what geologic process was occurring based on observable physical traits, and students excitedly providing the feedback that they "got" the concept. For one student on the Autism spectrum, dance became the key to working through his verbal communication barriers.