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NCAS FAQs
National Coalition for Core Arts Standards
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Learn about the new standards!
- View a Webinar: Get an introduction to the Standards via a webinar series featuring and Introduction and segments dissecting the Artistic Processes of Creating, Performing, Responding, and Connecting. Recordings available!
- Online Professional Development Courses: Deepen your knowledge with 6-week course on creating Cornerstone Assessments (OPDI-M8) and a 12-week course on implementing the Standards in your classroom or studio (OPDI-112). Both courses taught by Standards Writer and NDEO Executive Director Susan McGreevy-Nichols.
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National Core Arts Standards in Dance: An Overview
The National Core Arts Standards (NCAS) in Dance are designed to enable students to achieve dance literacy.
- To download the Dance Standards and supporting documents, click here.
- To view and engage with the interactive version of the Standards, click here.
- To purchase a poster version of the Standards, click here.
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To be literate in the arts, students need specific knowledge and and skills in a particular arts discipline to a degree that allows for fluency and deep understanding. In dance, this means discovering the expressive elements of dance; knowing the terminology that is used to comprehend dance; having a clear sense of embodying dance; and being able to reflect, critique, and connect personal experience to dance.
Four artistic processes organize the standards across the arts disciplines: Creating, Performing, Responding, and Connecting. Each artistic process includes a set of overarching anchor standards. The anchor standards are consistent among the arts disciplines represented in the National Core Arts Standards and demonstrate the breadth of the work. They are held constant for student learning over time.
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Photo courtesy of Rima Faber.
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Each anchor standard in dance is supported by a process component, an enduring understanding, and an essential question. These additional features will benefit educational leaders and teachers as they consider curricular models and structure lessons aligned to the dance standards.
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 Photo by Scott Swanson. Courtesy of Anne Arundel County Public Schools.
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Performance standards describe more specifically what students should know and be able to do in dance and are expressed as measurable outcomes across the grades pre-kindergarten to eighth grade and into high school at three levels of proficiency. The performance standards are the substantive portion of the work and represent the depth of study in dance.
Of significance is that the four artistic processes are addressed linearly in written standards, but are envisioned to occur simultaneously in the actual practice of dance. The dancer imagines, envisions, or improvises movements (creating), executes the movements (performing), reflects on them (responding), and connects the experience to all other contexts of meaning or knowledge (connecting). As a result, one lesson can address many standards at the same time. In a single class, students can learn by solving movement problems, showing their ideas through movement, thinking critically about them, and relating them to other ideas, experiences, contexts, and meanings.
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The National Core Arts Standards in Dance are rooted in a creative approach to teaching and learning. They describe expectations for learning in dance regardless of culture, style or genre and impart the breadth and depth of the dance experience through the art-making processes. The goal of the standards is to inspire dance educators and their students to explore the many facets of dance and prepare them for a lifetime of engagement with the art form.
For more information about the National Core Arts Standards in Dance, please refer to the Dance Standards Resource page and the National Coalition for Core Arts Standards Conceptual Framework for Arts Learning.
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Photo by Scott Swanson. Courtesy of Anne Arundel County Public Schools.
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