A taster of Another Dance Company's education work in secondary schools and a sample of the feedback received from participants and teachers:
GCSE Dance
at... Newfield Secondary School, Sheffield.
Laura provided a whole year of maternity leave cover running the Dance Department at Newfield School.
Y10 and Y11 GCSE Dance sessions and schemes of work were created, devised and taught.
This included the creation of a complex Group Dance for GCSE examination, ensuring pupils were challenged to perform all of the criteria needed to reach a high grade.
Y11 pupils also built up their performance skills through detailed rehearsal of the Set Study.
With a professional choreographer as their teacher students had a unique opportunity to gain choreographic skills and guidance. Y10 Choreography workshops leading to assessed performances built up students knowledge and confidence ready for their Choreography coursework in Y11.
Whilst Y11 students surpassed their targets in choreography by putting in the hours in specially created Choreography surgeries and refining their ideas using choreographic tools.
Laura's vast subject knowledge enabled students to gain indepth understanding of the professional works studied in Dance Theory alongside a true insight into the elements required to successfully study dance.
Planning, targets, data collection, assessment, and pupil tracking were all completed as part of the GCSE Dance programme.
"Laura was an organised and motivated dance teacher, with excellent planning skills. Her delivery of course content was of a high standard and the students benefited from her subject knowledge. She met all deadlines and was always open and honest in her communications. She is thorough in all she completes and ensures she knew the details of every student's progress and targets. She got on well with all staff and students and was a pleasure to work with. I look forward to working with her again in the future."
Creative Faculty Leader, Newfield Secondary School.
Cross- Curricular Dance
Literally Moving Dance Project
at... Yewlands Technology College, Westfield Sports College & Silverdale Secondary School, Sheffield.
Y7, Y8 & Y9 pupils worked with ADC over 5 sessions to create a dance. Each group used a book they were studying in school as the stimulus for their dance. Pupils contributed their ideas about the content and structure of the texts to create movement and choreograph a complete dance. The 3 secondary schools came together with 3 primary schools to perform their dances at a public performance with professional lighting, sound and a huge star studded audience.
'The content of the sessions was excellent. The students most definitely enjoyed them and as hoped for, I believe the dance brought the text studied to life.' P.E. Teacher, Westfield Sports College.
Cross- Curricular Dance
Epithet: Dance & Text Workshop
at... Thomas a Becket Catholic School, Wakefield.
Year 10 & 11 GCSE Dance pupils watched Another Dance Company's professional dance performance of the work 'Epithet' before participating in a 2 hour creative workshop.
Pupils learnt professional repertory, and created their own movement from several text-based tasks.
These included; making movements from syllables, conveying a charcter's emotional journey through a line graph and then into movement, improvising to punctuation, to mention a few.
"The performance was excellent and the ability of all the dancers was impressive... The teacher in the session was able to fully explain the tasks and draw out some wonderful solo pieces from the group. All in all I thought it has been an exceptional workshop!"
"Every pupil was challenged both with technique and also choreographic ability. It was excellent throughout."
"I think some will actually use this in their own choreography."
Head of P.E, Thomas a Becket Catholic School, Wakefield.
"It was a good pace and the right standard for everyone." Y11 participant.
"I thought it was clever how the syllable matched the movement." Y10 participant.
Creative Dance P.E.
at... East Hill S.E.N Secondary School, Sheffield.
Y7 & Y9 pupils created a dance each with Laura Aldridge over 4 sessions. Each dance used a folk tale as the stimulus to make movement. The pupils learnt movement phrases and added their own imaginative ideas to build a complete dance. The finished dances were performed at a Creative Arts Performance within the school to celebrate their achievements.
"We all commented on your style, instruction, voice and manner- it was terrific! It developed children's understanding of the story."
Y9 Teacher, East Hill Secondary, Sheffield.
"All the objectives were covered skillfully- the pupils cooperation and performance exceeded my expectations- I was very impressed by the structured work you did leading up to the dance. I would like to thank you for the high standard of teaching you brought to Arts Week and the joy and enthusiasm your work generated."
Y7 Teacher, East Hill Secondary, Sheffield
