A complete, ready-to-use classroom resource for grades 4–8, built around Linda Soules' So You Want To Be A Ballet Dancer. Inside: 39 scaffolded discussion questions organized by chapter, a 21-word kid-friendly glossary with pronunciations, seven hands-on activities, seven extension projects, nine writing prompts, full cross-curricular connections (math, science, social studies, ELA, visual arts, and music), and standards alignment with NGSS, Common Core, C3, and the National Core Arts Standards for dance and music. Nothing depends on prior dance experience from the teacher or the students, and no activity requires a studio. Designed to flex from a single-week unit to a longer integration pairing the physics of jumping and landing with the history of an art form that crossed borders and centuries — or to be pulled apart and used in pieces across the year: the balance and posture activities in a physical education block, the biography project in a research unit, the French vocabulary in a study of loanwords. Like the book itself, the guide trusts students with the real texture of the work: the devotion and the cost, the six hours a day that make two hours look weightless, the pointe shoe destroyed by every performance that looks effortless, and the dancer who knows exactly what it asks and chooses it again tomorrow. Includes a thoughtful teacher's note on handling injury, body-image standards, and the career that ends in a dancer's thirties — with specific guidance on keeping the discussion on institutions rather than on students' own bodies.