Summer PD - Flamenco

Last week I got to attend a week-long PD with my music teacher. The Kentucky Center for the Arts sponsors these academies in the summer, targeted at how to integrate the arts into other subjects in the curriculum. Music Teacher (MT) and I attended the academy on how to integrate World Languages and the Arts. 

The art we were specifically working on was the music and dance of flamenco. MT learned some basic Spanish phrases that she can use in her class daily and I learned about the dance and music standards that I can be teaching in my class. We also spent the entire week learning a flamenco choreography that we performed on the last day for the French & German language and arts teachers.

Photo by

Lieven SOETE

The best part of the week? We came away with a unit almost completely planned out that we will use for Hispanic Heritage Month! We still need to pick out music but we decided that for the final product (aka summative assessment) our 3-5 students will perform for K-2 students a short flamenco dance that they themselves will create - creating and performing are part of the Arts standards! The K-2 students will watch and respond with jaleos (those words people yell out while watching flamenco dancers) - responding to art is another Arts standard!



I can statements for the unit:

• I can recognize and understand direction and dance words for flamenco - adelante, atrás, arriba, abajo, palmas, golpes.
• I can identify locomotor and non-locomotor movements in dance.
• I can watch and critique a flamenco performance using Spanish jaleos - olé, agua, eso (K-5)
• I can create and perform a short flamenco dance using locomotor and non-locomotor movements. (3-5)

In addition to the integration across the music classroom and the Spanish classrom, we will ask our librarian to read books about the history of flamenco to give the students the background knowledge as well as provide videos and writing assignments to the classroom teachers. We're hoping the Art teacher will work with the kids to create a cave tablao (where gyspies traditionally performed flamenco) and some evening art to set the scene and our STEM lab teacher will bring it in during her unit on sound waves. 

We're also hoping to have all of this learning culminate in a family night with dancing, music, and tapas.

An integrated unit that answers my questions about what to do for Hispanic Heritage Month - not a bad deal. And we got paid $500 for the week. Oh, and they paid for us to go see Carmen at the Cincinnati Opera last month. The only bad thing was that MT couldn't stay overnight so we drove the 1.5 hours to Eastern Kentucky every day. If you are a teacher in Kentucky I highly recommend looking into The Kentucky Center for the Arts Academies for next summer.