EXSC250 - Gymnastics and Dance

Year

Credit points

Campus offering

Prerequisites

Teaching organisation

Unit rationale, description and aim

The ability to plan, teach and reflect upon dance, gymnastic and rhythmic movement experiences is important in the education and promotion of physical activity. This unit is designed to provide students with knowledge and practical experiences in rhythmic elements of gymnastics and dance activities. The aim of this unit is to develop in students competencies in a range of dance mediums, rhythmic movement, dominant movement patterns, choreography, and movement appreciation through the elements of composition. In this unit, students will be provided with opportunities to participate and evaluate a variety of teaching strategies related to the composition of rhythmic movement. This will develop skills and student confidence in planning, teaching and performance of dance, gymnastic and rhythmic movements. This unit will focus on an appreciation of social justice, an understanding of equity and a respect for the human being.

Learning outcomes

To successfully complete this unit you will be able to demonstrate you have achieved the learning outcomes (LO) detailed in the below table.

Each outcome is informed by a number of graduate capabilities (GC) to ensure your work in this, and every unit, is part of a larger goal of graduating from ACU with the attributes of insight, empathy, imagination and impact.

Explore the graduate capabilities.

On successful completion of this unit, students should be able to:

LO1 - Create and perform a dance routine using collaborative and creative techniques based on the elements of composition, and to utilise teaching skills to facilitate part of a dance lesson (GA1, GA5, GA7)  

LO2 - Plan and develop engaging and creative teaching and learning activities that facilitate the progression and development of gymnastic/rhythmic skills for future practice (GA1, GA4, GA5 GA8)  

LO3 - Analyse and explain movement patterns, elements of composition, safety concepts and skill techniques related to dance and gymnastics (GA4, GA8, GA9)  

LO4 - Engage in, reflect upon and evaluate a range of dance and gymnastic teaching activities that facilitate learning (GA4, GA5, GA8, GA9)  

Graduate attributes

GA1 - demonstrate respect for the dignity of each individual and for human diversity 

GA4 - think critically and reflectively 

GA5 - demonstrate values, knowledge, skills and attitudes appropriate to the discipline and/or profession 

GA7 - work both autonomously and collaboratively 

GA8 - locate, organise, analyse, synthesise and evaluate information 

GA9 - demonstrate effective communication in oral and written English language and visual media 

Content

Topics will include:  

• Social and cultural perspectives  
• History and evolution of gymnastics and dance  
• Gymnastics and dance safety, rules and current trends  
• Dominant movement patterns  
• Elements of composition  
• Gymnastic and dance progressions and composition  
• Implementation of gymnastics and dance in education  
• Assessment in dance and gymnastics  

Learning and teaching strategy and rationale

This unit employs student-centred teaching and learning strategies based on the principles of constructivism and reflective practice. Students will construct new meaning (build on prior knowledge) and make sense of what they are learning, why they are learning this and how this learning is applied.   

These strategies encourage independent and life long learning, where students take responsibility for their learning. The learning tasks are authentic (engage in tasks that are real), reflective (deep learning) and collaborative (engaging and working with peers). 

Student centred strategies include reflective writing, critical thinking activities , co-operative/ collaborative learning, incorporating Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and peer/independent learning. These strategies link directly to the assessment tasks, as the assessments are a teaching and learning strategy in itself.  

These strategies have been chosen to give students opportunities to actively engage with the content and to provide variety within the tutorial and assessment tasks. The knowledge and skills acquired can be applied and are relevant to what is required in real world situations and for future profession/practice/workplace. 

Assessment strategy and rationale

Employers today seek more than knowledge from students, they want them to transfer learning to real situations, problem solve and have higher order thinking skills. Authentic assessment provides students with these skills, because the tasks are real, meaningful, require judgment and innovation and are related to one’s workplace, personal and social life. Students learn in different ways, professionally we need to explore and provide opportunities so they perform to their very best, feel worthwhile, empowered and enjoy learning. 

In order to best enable students to achieve unit learning outcomes and develop graduate attributes, standards-based assessment is utilised, consistent with University assessment requirements.

 A range of assessment strategies are used including: 

1. Collaborative Learning: Group dance presentation - To create and perform a dance routine using collaborative and creative techniques based on the elements of composition, and to utilise teaching skills to facilitate part of a dance lesson. This assessment type can be used and applied in real life situations/contexts (school, community, and youth groups) and future practice/profession.
2. Constructivism strategy: Gymnastics resource file - To create a student's own teaching/learning activities in the area of gymnastic and rhythmic skills that will become the start of a resource file for the student's future teaching/practice. This assessment type can be used and applied in real life situations/contexts (school, community and youth groups) and in their future practice/profession.
3. Examination: Requires students to demonstrate their understanding and application of course content.

This unit contains graded hurdle tasks whereby a particular assignment is the only assignment piece to assess one or more of the learning outcomes of the unit. This can occur when it is deemed necessary to have an explicit learning outcome linked to a key piece of skill or knowledge students are expected to develop within the unit and an assignment is developed to ensure it assesses this learning outcome effectively. This is the case within this unit as it forms part of the collection of units required for students to have Personal Development, Health and Physical Education (PDHPE) as a teaching area once qualified. These units are designed to meet the entry conditions of post graduate teacher training courses as well as state-based PDHPE teacher registration requirements.

Overview of assessments

Representative texts and references

Gym

Mauldon, E (2014). Teaching Gymnastics. (2nd Edition). Routledge: Australia.

Ortiz, M. (2014). Tumbling Basics. Australia: Human Kinetics.  

Werner, P. H. (2012).Teaching Children Gymnastics. (3rd Edition). Champaign IL: Human Kinetics.  

Dance

Sofras, P.A. (2020). Dance Composition Basics. (2nd Edition). Champaign IL: Human Kinetics.