In this article, the author talks about Motif Notation, a means of creating, recording, and reflecting on dance experience, and dance making as educational partners in an urban middle school. The author shares partial tales of middle school-aged children engaging in dance making and Motif Notation which illustrate the fact that teens need to author their own understandings, judgments, and longing in order to make sense of their real world. This article also shares reflections of the author's experience and those of middle school-aged children which illustrate instances where teens have "organized experience into temporary meaningful episodes," to intensify the significance of dance making and the use of Motif Notation "noting that something is a "part" of a whole and that something is a "cause" of something else." In middle school dance curricula, dance making practice that uses Motif Notation as a tool to create, record, and reflect on dance experience compellingly serves as a means to actualize individual thought and action in solo or group projects. (Contains 2 figures.)