Dance Student Evaluation Guide with Rubrics

Do you find yourself having difficulty with student evaluation and assessment? Do parents and students challenge you on level placement? Do you want to make sure your students are progressing not just in dance technique, but also in artistry and social-emotional skills? This newly revised, beautifully re-designed Holistic Guide to Dance Student Evaluation is the perfect tool for you! Now featuring a Canva template that you can use to easily create fully customized rubrics of your own! Get ready for your easiest dance student evaluation process ever – and get on your way to creating the studio culture of your dreams – with this ready-to-use dance student evaluation guide!

The Holistic Guide to Dance Student Evaluation is a comprehensive resource for positive, growth-oriented, and holistic evaluation of your students' learning. The guide leads dance teachers, studio owners, and program directors through the process of evaluating their dance students based on dance technique, artistry, and social-emotional skills. By having a comprehensive evaluation process in place, dance teachers can ensure that their students are continually learning, improving, and working toward their goals.

This comprehensive dance student evaluation guide includes detailed rubrics that assess student performance in:

• Dance technique - using detailed breakdowns of technical concepts and skills that are shared among most dance genres, including alignment, coordination, and use of weight, space, and level. 
• Artistry - using artistic skills that are relevant for all dance genres, including musicality, dancing alone and as an ensemble, and portraying an emotion or character through their movement.
• Social-emotional skills that all students should be working toward, regardless of the dance genre they study, including persistence, team-work, respect, and responsibility.  

Also included are:

• A blank rubric to be filled in with the specific skills, concepts, and vocabulary of the dance form that the students have been working on throughout the term.
• A questionnaire to solicit additional written feedback from the instructor about the students' growth and progress during the term. 
• A student self-reflection form, to engage students in the evaluation process and better understand their goals, motivations, and self-perception.
• A parent/guardian reflection form to engage families in the evaluation process and help them understand their dancer's goals, motivations, and progress throughout the term. 

Using all these modes of evaluation together provides a comprehensive understanding of student learning and growth; however, the pieces can be used separately as well. They are adaptable for use in any dance environment, from studios to universities, and for teachers of any age group, skill level, or dance genre. You can print the PDF rubrics as-is and hand write on them, or follow the link in the document to a Canva template that you can use to create your own version, customized with your own evaluation items, studio colors, logo, and more! 

Using The Holistic Dance Student Evaluation process studio or program-wide can help studio owners and program directors ensure that their students are progressing appropriately through the curriculum, and that student leveling is as fair and unbiased as possible.