Basic Locomotor Skills Teacher Resources

Teach and review elementary locomotor skills. Use "Great Balls of Fire" by Jerry Lee Lewis to get youngsters up and grooving to the beat! The dance steps are described in rich detail and you will have the class jumping, skipping, leaping, and hopping around in no time at all.

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Students demonstrate and define basic modern dance vocabulary. Identify and explore a range of stimuli to create a dance movement. Recognize and explain how the creative process in dance is influenced by personal movement styles.

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Students experience dance and movement. In this kinesthetic lesson, students practice movement of their limbs and joints. They use a hula hoop to identify personal space.

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Here's a 32-count line dance to the song "Disturbia" by Rihanna. This dance introduces the triple-step. It's a quick right-left-right or a quick left-right-left step. It's not complicated. The really nice thing about this lesson is that there is a video that teaches this line dance sequence. First the instructors demonstrate the steps, then they walk the learners through some practice time, and finally do the entire dance to the music. 

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Students develop dances. In this movement lesson, students play action and stillness games and learn motif writing symbols that communicate dance moves. Students use locomotor and non-locomotor movement to create their own movement phrases.

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Students explore two Native American legends. In this cultural traditions instructional activity, students read "The Legend of Blue Bonnet," and "The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush." Students then study basic Native American dance movements prior to creating dances for the legends.

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Get youngsters moving by teaching them some basic dance moves. This dance can be done in a circle, a line, or scattered around the gym. There are four movement combinations that are taught to the song "Purple People Eater" by Sheb Wooley.  Steps are written out and of course you can adapt any of this to meet the needs of your class.

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Students accurately demonstrate non-locomotor/axial movements such as bend, twist, stretch, swing. They accurately demonstrate eight basic locomotor movements.

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Students practice locomotor and axial movements. For this body awareness lesson, students discover freeze movement, axial movements, and locomotor movements. Students practice the movements as they maintain personal space.

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Students investigate how to move through space before designing dances that show feelings, ideas, and thoughts. Using motif notation, they record movement ideas while they explore a variety of movement concepts. Using scoring guidelines, they demonstrate non-locomotor and locomotor movement.

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