Educational Supplements

My brain is exhausted and my typing fingers are sore it must be that time again, Educational Supplements Time!

In layman terms I write Study Guides for performing art programs. Each supplement (I was told by an Educational Director the other day never to call them guides)is focused on standards based activities created to augment whatever prep the teacher is doing for the field trip and to give the educator some standards-based weapon power in their fight against the district cuts in field trip funding. Say that 5 times fast.

Generally my guides/supplements have a similar layout. I keep them down to 4 to 6 pages, easy to read with black and white art as many educators do not have access to color printers- plus if it is already in color what do the kids get to color? One page is completely focused on language arts and discussion questions (who, what , when, where, why , how would you?, what do you think). One page focused on multi step mathematics word problems and the additional activities and information in science, social studies, health topped off with a list of standards that are reached just by attending the arts programming itself. AND if the show is in the summer I just might pop in a word search, crossword or maze to mix it up.

A major difference from many guides/supplements I see online is that mine are ready to go for the student. As a former teacher I really detested the 14 page brightly colored list of donors, sponsors and ads with a page or so of guidelines for how to act in the theatre followed by suggestions of activities I could do in my classroom if I wanted to take the time to create the materials I would need to perform them. Obviously the people writing these guides had never been in a classroom. I wanted something I could print and give, looked good printed on the 10 year old printer I was lucky to have access to and that dealt with a wide variety of learning styles while also giving my students practice in the formats they will become familiar with through the amazing amount of state sponsored testing. (I think I found more field trip money!) I wanted TEKS I could write down on the 800 forms I needed to fill out to justify the trip. In short I wanted the trip to do part of my work for me.

I hope I'm helping.