Arts Education Standards

Dance

• Content Standard 1 — Identifying and demonstrating movement elements and skills in performing dance

Achievement Standards for Grades K–4

• Demonstrate accuracy in moving to a musical beat and responding to changes in tempo
• Demonstrate kinesthetic awareness, concentration, and focus in performing movement skills
• Demonstrate movements in straight and curved pathways
• Content Standard 2 — Understanding choreographic principles, processes, and structures

Achievement Standards for Grades K–4

• Use improvisations to discover and invent movement and to solve movement problems
• Content Standard 3 — Understanding dance as a way to create and communicate meaning

Achievement Standards for Grades K–4

• Present their own dances to peers and discuss their meanings with competence and confidence
• Content Standard 4 — Applying and demonstrating critical and creative thinking skills in dance

Achievement Standards for Grades K–4

• Explore, discover, and realize multiple solutions to a given movement problem; choose their favorite solution; and discuss the reasons for that choice

Music

• Content Standard 3 — Improvising melodies, variations, and accompaniments

Achievement Standards for Grades K–4

• Improvise simple rhythmic and melodic ostinato accompaniments
• Content Standard 4 — Composing and arranging music within specified guidelines

Achievement Standards for Grades K–4

• Create and arrange music to accompany readings or dramatizations

Theatre

• Content Standard 1 — Script writing by planning and recording improvisations based on personal experience and heritage, imagination, literature, and history

Achievement Standards for Grades K–4

• Collaborate to select interrelated characters, environments, and situations for classroom dramatizations
• Content Standard 2 — Acting by assuming roles and interacting improvisations

Achievement Standards for Grades K–4

• Use variations of locomotor and nonlocomotor movement and vocal pitch, tempo, and tone for different characters
• Content Standard 3 — Designing by visualizing and arranging environments for classroom dramatizations

Achievement Standards for Grades K–4

• Collaborate to establish playing spaces for classroom dramatizations and to select and safely organize available materials that suggest scenery, properties, lighting, sound, costumes, and makeup
• Content Standard 4 — Directing by planning classroom dramatizations

Achievement Standards for Grades K–4

• Collaboratively plan and rehearse improvisations and demonstrate various ways of staging classroom dramatizations

Visual Art

• Content Standard 1 — Understanding and applying media, techniques, and processes

Achievement Standards for Grades K–4

• Know the differences among materials, techniques, and processes
• Describe how different materials, techniques, and processes cause different responses
• Use different media, techniques, and processes to communicate ideas, experiences, and stories
• Content Standard 2 — Using knowledge of structures and functions

Achievement Standards for Grades K–4

• Use visual structures and functions of art to communicate ideas
• Content Standard 3 — Choosing and evaluating a range of subject matter, symbols, and ideas

Achievement Standards for Grades K–4

• Explore and understand prospective content for works of art
• Select and use subject matter, symbols, and ideas to communicate meaning

Source: National Standards for Arts Education, published by Music Educators National Conference (MENC). Copyright © 1994 by MENC. Used by permission. The complete National Arts Standards and additional materials relating to the standards are available from MENC, The National Association for Music Education, 1806 Robert Fulton Drive, Reston, VA 20191, telephone: 800-336-3768.

Source, Dance Standards: This article/quote is reprinted from National Standards for Arts Education with permission of the National Dance Association, an association of the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance. The original source may be purchased from: National Dance Association, 1900 Association Drive, Reston, VA 20191-1599;
or phone 703-476-3421.