About 7 years ago my supervisor set up a random collaborative meeting for the specialists with our principal. My principal strongly...disliked specialists, so you can imagine our trepidation. They told us that they wanted to upgrade our winter sing-a-long concert into an all-specialist event. They wanted me to try dancing with the students. First of all, I was not very comfortable with dance. Like, at all. Second, I had no idea how to integrate dance into a winter holiday event.After some serious brainstorming, I came up with an idea based on the comedian Judson Laipply's "The Evolution of Dance." And thus, Winterfest was born:

While the art teacher put winter artwork up around the gym from 440 students like wallpaper, I planned to have each class perform their own famous song with attached dance from different decades of pop music. The way it used to work is each class would sing for the music teacher and then leave the stage, and the parents would have to wait for the next grade to file onto the risers. I minimized this wait time by having the classes come down off the stage after singing to dance while the next group got ready to sing behind the curtains. It has become very efficient! Here's a sample of the first year...definitely not our best product, but they are pretty cute making so many mistakes:

After a couple years, I decided to start recording myself doing the dances (often with props) and loaded them on YouTube so that students could practice the correct choreography instead of relying on memory alone. It's become a huge hit with families following me for fun and fitness at home. And that's where we are today. Not only have we made big improvements, but I also started a special dance team for 4th-6th graders to try out for (they now open our Winterfest show). I linked a Just Dance video on my channel, and students practiced at home via a blended/flip classroom-style challenge. They then came in to audition during my preps/lunches. I took 30 out of 70+. This is them at our rehearsals:

We had to split the event into 2 shows (a morning and afternoon one) as we ended up getting over 700 parents to show up during the work day! The first year they were out the school doors and in the street. We just didn't have the space for so many people!

My YouTube Channel

Check out my channel for over 40 dance choreography ideas! We're at about 20,000 views!

<-- This is what happens without a Youtube channel for students to practice with at home!

<-- Our first dance dream team performance!

<-- A typical performance from a classroom in 2018, and not our dance team. This is all skill levels together, so every students performs regardless of skill. Considering that, they do very well!

Here are more performances and some of my flipped-learning videos: