Win win teaching methods when delivering dance education online
Today I thought I would write about some easy strategies to help teachers to create a win win classroom environment when delivering dance education online. I hope these strategies increase your success with your students to not only help them progress faster but to develop critical thinking and problem solving strategies.
Win win teaching focuses on positive reinforcement. Having children learn dance at a young age isn’t easy and they are easily distracted. Fortunately our online program is really engaging with powerful visuals and great dance teachers. But if you find kids do start to lose focus, use positive reinforcement to get everybody back on track.
Rather than nagging children for poor behaviour, start rewarding them for positive behaviour and their attitude in class will change completely. This helps the kids be more accountable. So see if you can turn it into a positive and start rewarding productive behaviours.
Here are some tools to try to help create a win win dance class environment
- Have all of your kids line up their water bottles along a wall so water breaks can be quick. If you find the break creates the opportunity for mischief, throw in a positive reinforcement. It doesn’t have to be a treat, but something that’s valuable for the children and done as a collective.
- Technology is our friend and we are so fortunate that it’s easily accessible. It allows us to bring you great video content and you can stop and start the class as required. Our four online dance program trial schools across Queensland saw a significant improvement in child engagement. But if you find some children are disengaging, find a way to use positive re-enforcement to get their focus and attention.
- Feedback really helps. We know students and teachers respond to feedback and it’s how we all learn. Negative feedback can often provide negative results and positive feedback provides positive results. Always provide your kids with a compliment sandwich – positive comment, the correction required and a positive result. For example – great work with the jive, let’s work on staying in time with the music and I loved your pose at the end.
- Offer best critique after best practice. This is giving your kids positive motivation. Their hard work has paid off with improved dancing technique. But think about how you word compliments and corrections. Simply saying ‘good job’ doesn’t provide students with any concrete feedback. What made it a good dance? Be specific.
We would love to hear how you are going with the delivery of our brand new online dance program. So please do connect and share the learning and feedback. We can only ever improve when we know what we’re doing right (and wrong).
