Building More Dances: Blueprints for Putting Movements Together

If you liked Building Dances, then you'll love Building More Dances! This new book uses the same hands-on approach to the mechanics and art of dance making as the first book. Plus, it provides even more tools to help teachers facilitate the dance-making process: more dance construction models, more suggestions to spark creativity, and more ideas for lesson plans!

Like the earlier book, Building More Dances puts the teacher in the role of facilitator. It covers all the fundamentals so that even teachers with little or no dance background will feel comfortable teaching students how to build dances.

Building More Dances expands on the information in Building Dances, introducing even more ways to build dances and facilitate student learning. The book contains 23 new dance construction models and 108 all-new Deal-a-Dance cards. The dance construction models are creative, often cross-curricular blueprints for putting movements together in ways that satisfy National Physical Education Standards as well as the National Dance Standards. And the Deal-a-Dance cards provide movement examples that students can take to the floor with them to try out on the spot. They're great hands-on tools that stimulate students' creativity and inventiveness in the dance-making process.

Building More Dances helps ensure student success with new material that elaborates on the seven steps to building dances:

- Choosing subject matter
- Exploring and selecting movement
- Coordinating music and movement
- Exploring possibilities
- Refining and memorizing dance making
- Adding the finishing touches
- Performing the dance

Each of the dance construction models lists grade-appropriate variations to make the dances suitable for any school-age group. You can use the constructions as single lessons or develop them into entire units. Regardless of your field of expertise or the ages and ability levels of your students, this book can supply hours, days, or even weeks of material. The book also contains specific assessment suggestions and numerous ideas for presenting and performing student-created dances.

Building More Dances also includes an action plan for aligning standards and curriculum. Not only does the book define and compare the National Dance Standards and National Physical Education Standards, but each of the dance construction models also provides concrete suggestions to help you ensure that your program supports these standards, as well as standards for applied learning, music, geography, social studies, and other subjects.

Susan McGreevy-Nichols has been teaching at Roger Williams Middle School in Providence, Rhode Island, since 1974. She is the founder and director of the inner-city school's nationally recognized dance program in which more than 300 of the school's 900 students elect to participate. She also lectures nationally on setting up dance programs in public schools, teaching dance as a nondancer, assessing dance, and writing grants for dance programs.

A charter member and treasurer of the National Dance Education Organization (NDEO), McGreevy-Nichols has served as the president of the Rhode Island Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (RIAHPERD); vice president of dance for the Eastern District of AAHPERD (EDA); president of the National Dance Association (NDA); and chair of the Rhode Island Alliance for Arts in Education. She is a licensed trainer for the National Center for Education and the Economy Course I.

McGreevy-Nichols has received numerous NDA presidential citations and an EDA Merit Award in Dance. In 1994 she was named Rhode Island's Dance Teacher of the Year, and in 1995 she was honored both as the NDA National Dance Teacher of the Year and as an EDA Outstanding Professional. She received AAHPERD's Honor Award in 2000. The coauthor of Building Dances, she lives in Coventry, Rhode Island, and enjoys traveling.

Helene Scheff, another coauthor of Building Dances, has been a dance educator and administrator for 45 years in both the public and private sectors. A registered dance educator, she has served as a choreographer with nondancers in community theater, children's theater, high school theater, flag squads, summer camps, and college theater. She is the founder and executive director of Chance to Dance (an in-school dance program started in 1985 that brings quality dance education to children in grades four through eight.

A graduate of the famed NYC High School of Performing Arts, Scheff has trained in New York, Chicago, and California. She is a former Joffrey Ballet dancer and has taught and choreographed for the University of Kansas, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Rhode Island College. She has served as vice president of dance and conference coordinator for RIAHPERD, vice president of dance for EDA, and treasurer for the Rhode Island Alliance for Arts in Education. She is a founding member and former president of the Dance Alliance of Rhode Island.

A registered dance educator, Scheff was named RIAHPERD's Dance Teacher of the Year in 1994 and was honored as an EDA Outstanding Professional in 1996. She received the RIAHPERD President's Honor Award in 1997 and an NDA Presidential Citation in 1999. Scheff lives in North Kingstown, Rhode Island, with her husband Edward. In her free time she enjoys entertaining her grandchildren, attending musicals, and traveling.

Marty Sprague is a professional choreographer and performer with 29 years of experience in public dance education. As the artistic director of Chance to Dance, she facilitates dance making in large student groups of nondancers. She is also a dance educator at Roger Williams Middle School in Providence and is a licensed trainer for the National Center for Education and the Economy Course I, Standard Based Curriculum—a professional development course for standards-based teaching and learning.

Sprague has taught professional development courses for dance certification for the state of Rhode Island. In 1992 she was named the Rhode Island Dance Educator of the Year and earned an Outstanding Professional Award from EDA. She received a Presidential Citation from NDA in 1999.

Sprague holds an MA in dance education from the Teacher's College at Columbia University. She and her husband, John, live in Slocum, Rhode Island, where she enjoys taking dance classes, spending time with her family and two grandsons, and flying as a passenger in her husband's small aircraft.