Practice keeping your shoulders straight, arms still, hands in a fist and SMILE!! To help keep your hands in place, dance with a coin or other small object in each hand.

Make sure you're dancing on the proper kind of floor so you don't ruin your shins and knees.

Don't just stretch and warm up the large leg muscles. Remember to do the same for the smaller tendons and ligaments surrounding your feet and ankles.

To spice up your practicing at home, put some different music in like Riverdance or Lord Of The Dance, or you can make up your own choreogpahy to the show music. Or pretend you're teaching a class or dancing in a show!

Try to practice in front of a mirror as often as you can to make sure your foot placement and turnout is proper.

Try to get as many opinions from as many different people as you can about your dancing. Apart from your teacher, ask a more advanced dancer than yourself to see what they think. Or dance in front of friends and relatives even if they know nothing about Irish dance!

You may choose to practice your soft shoe dances in socks. Just make sure that your socks won't slip on whatever surface you're dancing. Soft shoes give you more support, so if you can do a dance like a pro in socks, imagine how great you are in soft shoes!

Don't eat (a lot) right before a class. Otherwise you'll end up feeling ill or get a cramp.

When practicing rocks and toestands, tighten up your quadriceps (front of the thigh). This will give you better balance.

Try going over your steps as much as you can, whether you're actually doing them or just going over them in your mind.

Practice pointing your feet. This will gradually increase the flexibility in your feet and you'll get a much better arch.

Don't point your feet just by curling the toes down. Focus on bending your arch. Every time you point, you should feel something happening in your arch. Just curling your toes can lead to many foot problems later on.

While dancing, make sure that you're kicking your butt and that your foot is pointed whenever it's off the ground and that your feet are crossed and turned out.

Since most dance steps are traditionally done with the right foot first, I know a lot of lefties (such as myself) have a problem getting used to doing everything "backwards". Practice, practice, practice!