DEL Dance and Literacy Curriculum Project

The DEL Dance and Literacy Curriculum project emerged in response to the impact of the pandemic on foundational literacy skills for New York City students. Responding to this need, The New York Community Trust launched an initiative to address the literacy crisis through high-quality arts education projects to support the development of foundational literacy skills in NYC schools. In June 2023, The New York Community Trust awarded the 92NY Dance Education Laboratory (DEL) a two-year grant to design, implement, and document a new Pre-K-5 dance and literacy curriculum for NYC students.

The DEL Dance and Literacy Curriculum project is grounded in DEL’s pedagogy model emphasizing expanded vocabulary usage, improving language and communication skills, and strengthening reading and writing skills through dance learning. DEL’s curriculum supports dance literacy strategies by applying the Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) framework as a movement-vocabulary enrichment tool, emphasizing accessible movement terminology that links to diverse academic disciplines. In addition, DEL’s student-centered model includes movement exploration and dance-making opportunities that reinforce literacy principles in an integrative and collaborative manner.

This DEL Curricular Project launched in 2023 and includes: 

• The design of two new curriculum modules for grade bands PreK, K-2, 3-5, and D75 (K-2, 3-5), which integrate dance and literacy standards.
• The design and implementation of professional learning workshops for K-5 dance educators, Pre-K classroom educators, and K-5 classroom teachers who utilize an integrated arts focus.
• The design and dissemination of a Dance and Literacy Family Guide (dual language).
• The creation and dissemination of a Dance and Literacy Teacher Toolkit for teachers to augment the DEL Dance and Literacy Curriculum.