Dance Lesson Planning Guide with Online and Printable Templates

As a dance teacher, YOU know what is best for your dance students. With The Holistic Guide to Dance Lesson Planning, you can to create your own unique dance lesson plans that are authentic to you and your dance students: your knowledge, your dance teaching style, your dance students' goals, and your shared vision for holistic growth in dance technique, artistry, and overall wellbeing.

This guide makes it easy to create your own authentic, engaging, and inspired dance lesson plans with The Holistic Guide to Dance Lesson Planning. This 68-page digital resource plus a free workbook walks you through the entirelesson planning process and delivered to your inbox upon completion of payment.

The Holistic Guide to Dance Lesson Planning has been completely revised, re-designed, and expanded for 2026, based on years of feedback from dance teachers like you. You'll love the new features: 

• Brand new design, with easy to read format
• More detailed description of the entire lesson planning process
• Tips from my own dance lesson planning experience
• Sections on Curriculum, Student Learning Outcomes, Skills Breakdowns, and Assessments
• More printable lesson planning templates included
• FREE fillable PDF workbook to use along with the guide
  

he Holistic Guide to Dance Lesson Planning is THE perfect tool to help you develop unique, engaging, well-organized dance lesson plans that delivers results. This best-selling resource has been used by hundreds of dance educators around the world. Dance educators like you agree that The Holistic Guide to Dance Lesson Planning helps them create amazing dance lesson plans that enable their dance students grow dance technique, artistry, AND their overall well-being.

"I feel so inspired and excited to plan my next teaching term! This resource is full of step-by-step practices to make sure that my classes will be cohesive, effective and build to successful learning. I especially like that technique was not treated as the end-all-be-all of learning. Shannon also gives equal weight to creative exploration and social-emotional growth, with concrete ideas for how to incorporate those areas into class. I can imagine my students not only becoming better dancers through utilizing this lesson planning guide, but also having more fun as we go, and feeling an increased sense of belonging and community." - Diane, Dance Teacher in Washington, USA

The Holistic Guide to Dance Lesson Planning is a 68-page digital resource plus a free workbook that walks you through the entire lesson planning process ...  from figuring out what to teach, to determining how to teach it, to organizing your material in an easy-to-use format that will keep you organized all season long. The guide is divided into 4 parts:

• Part 1 -  The 5 Questions: As you answer these questions, you will determine what concepts and skills you will include in your dance lesson plans, focusing equally on dance technique, artistry, and students' overall wellbeing. 
• Part 2 - The 8 Lesson Planning Steps: As you move through these 8 steps, you will determine how to teach the concepts and skills. These easy steps will turn your lists of concepts and skills into engaging and effective lesson plans.
• Part 3 - Example Lesson Plans: In this section you will find 2 sample lesson ideas, to show you what The Holistic Approach to Dance Lesson Planning looks like in action.
• Part 4 - Printable Templates: These beautifully designed printable templates will help you use The Holistic Dance Teacher Approach in your dance classes.
  
• BONUS - FREE WORKBOOK: The Holistic Dance Teacher Dance Lesson Planning workbook in fillable PDF format will help you use The Holistic Approach to Dance Lesson Planning in your own classes!

This dance lesson planning guide is based on my experience as a performer, choreographer, and educator of ballet, modern, musical theatre, jazz, and jazz-derived forms like lyrical and contemporary It is designed to be broad enough to apply to a range of dance genres and styles, but it does come from the perspective of Western concert dance.

Make the dance lesson planning process authentic, natural, and organized with The Holistic Dance Teacher Guide to Dance Lesson Planning!

The Holistic Dance Teacher Collection is trusted by dance industry professionals all over the world, with over 2,500 orders placed by dancers, dance teachers, choreographers, studio owners, program directors, and dance parents in all 50 US states and 49 countries since 2021.