Dance games, and dance in general, have numerous benefits for pupils with special needs in many different areas, such as communication and social skills, improvements in flexibility, strength and motors skills, improved cognitive skills, as well as behaviour and emotional growth. Dance helps the students reach their best potential in their strongest areas, it offers an outlet for creativity and imagination, as well as helps them express their inner self. Pupils with special needs learn about their bodies through different motions, they become more aware of their bodies, learn how to work together and how to solve possible conflicts and they reach an important increase in confidence and self-esteem growth. There are many benefits of including dance and dance games into educational and training programmes as a part of regular physical education classes. We see positive outcomes in different areas of schoolwork, better interests in, and understanding of, different school subjects and nonetheless, better grades. To achieve the best possible benefits of including dance and dance games into educational programmes, there have to be certain adjustments made for pupils with special needs and it is essential that these adjustments are professionally and accurately planned, carried out and evaluated. Pupils with special needs may have certain problems with acquisition of new knowledge and with reaching the goals of physical education, as are stated in the curriculum.
As a part of this master’s thesis, we have studied the results of performing dance and dance games with special needs pupils who attend Educational programmes with adapted implementation and additional professional help, as well as Adapted educational programmes with lower educational standards. We conducted interviews with an elementary school teacher, a physical education teacher and a special education and rehabilitation pedagogue. What we set out to achieve when conducting these interviews was to study the process of including dance and dance games into lesson planning, to analyse certain challenges and possible problems that the interviewees may have encountered, to establish the positive outcomes of using dance and dance games with special needs pupils and to study the process of planning, performing and evaluating the adjustments needed for the best possible outcomes for the pupils themselves. Based on the given answers we were able to establish the level of competence that the interviewed pedagogues have for adapting the processes of learning and teaching dance games and dance to pupils with special needs.
The findings we were able to gather from the given answers were that all of the interviewed teachers follow the physical education curriculum when planning dance and dance games as a part of educational programme. They face challenges and problems with lesson planning; they feel unsure about the planned adjustments; they find it difficult to balance between individual and group work and they face challenges with mixed classes and mixed level classes. The elementary school teacher, the physical education teacher and the special education and rehabilitation pedagogue are familiar with the positive benefits of dance and dance games on pupils with special needs and they observe these in their work. The interviewees perform a variety of adjustments for students with special needs. These adjustments are planned and evaluated in a team which also includes the pupils and their parents. Based on the given answers, we have established that the interviewed pedagogues use appropriate adjustments when including dance and dance games into their teaching of pupils with special needs. The most important factor when planning the lessons are the pupils themselves, their interests and strongest areas, needs and special needs.
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