These recordings help level the playing field of reading comprehension and allow my struggling readers to enjoy the plays and discuss them on a deeper level. – Michael Aspinwall, Port of Los Angeles High School

The kids were mesmerized. They didn't want to hear anyone make a sound.
- Cynthia Orken, Pawtucket, RI

The new K-12 Common Core State Standards reflect a new educational approach focused on deeper learning of content and mastery of both basic and advanced higher order thinking skills—not just literacy and comprehension but problem solving, creative, analytic and critical thinking skills. A critical part of this approach is arts-integrated learning (teaching "through" and "with" the arts).

Using L.A. Theatre Works' recordings to enrich students learning experiences is nothing new. In fact, for more than a decade, L.A. Theatre Works' Alive & Aloud Program has annually provided over 3,000 teachers nationwide with free audio plays such as The Crucible, The Grapes of Wrath, Julius Caesar, which help to address the needs of struggling learners and advanced students alike.

L.A. Theatre Works' new CLASS Acts project builds on our commitment to education by providing teachers with additional titles that will widely taught in association with the new Standards. Here are some facts about education and how L.A. Theatre Works' new project will strengthen student engagement and improve their learning and academic success.

Today's Challenges in Education
Findings from the 2010 Nation's Report Card and The President's Committee for the Arts and Humanities' 2011 report, Reinvesting in Arts Education: Winning America's Future Through Creative Schools, show the following:

• More than half of U.S. secondary students have difficulty reading and understanding their textbooks and course materials, affecting their performance in math and other subjects.

• Students report being bored, almost half saying that classes are not interesting. This is true even of those with high grades who drop out.

Two-thirds of students say they are not inspired to work hard and that too little was expected of them. (bridgeland et al., 2006)

• Many high school graduates lack the skills to make them successful in post-secondary education and later in the workforce.

These "21st Century Skills," or habits of mind, include problem solving, critical and creative thinking, dealing with ambiguity and complexity, integration of multiple skill sets, and the ability to perform cross-disciplinary work.

• Leaders worry that the U.S. is losing its competitive edge in creativity and innovation, and that the call for ever more rigorous academic standards is insufficient without a concomitant focus on developing creativity and imagination.

How the Arts and L.A. Theatre Works' Audio Recordings Meet these Challenges
The arts have been proven to have a powerful and direct impact on student engagement, motivation and achievement:

Student Motivation and Engagement
• Participation in the arts is linked to improved attendance, persistence, focused attention, heightened educational aspirations, and intellectual risk taking.

• Arts integration (teaching "through" and "with" the arts) produces better attendance and fewer discipline problems, increases graduation rates, and improves test scores; motivating students who were difficult to reach otherwise; and providing challenges to more academically successful students.

• Listening to audio content brings plays and dramatized literature to life, deepening students' emotional connection to the work and increasing their enjoyment of it.

• Students who were learning through arts-integrated units expressed no feelings of boredom or discouragement with the learning methods and showed interest in independent learning. After working through the non-arts units, students often self-described as discouraged; after arts-integrated units students demonstrated increased interest in the subject matter.

Core Skills and Competencies
• Arts integration is associated with reading achievement gains particularly for economically disadvantage students and English learners.

• Reading researchers have found that visualization (children creating mental images as they read) can produce significant gains in reading comprehension (Shanahan, et al., 2010).

• Audio plays help develop students' listening skills, which are essential for successful learning in all subject areas, helping to improve concentration and interest in school.

• Hearing language helps students build vocabulary and identify different speech rhythms and patterns.

• Audio plays provide models of pronunciation, sentence structure and grammatical accuracy that develop students' writing skills.

• Audio plays used in tandem with written texts give students the opportunity to listen as they read along, exposing them to vocabulary beyond their reading level and to grasp pronunciation of unfamiliar words.

• Audio plays stimulate the imagination as students visualize as they listen, something they can't do when they stop to "decode" written text.

Advanced Thinking Skills and Life Success
• A study comparing arts-integrated instruction to traditional experiences, shows that arts-integrated units consistently engaged students in complex analytical cognitive activity, including students who struggle with academic tasks.

• Listening to classic and contemporary plays deepens students' understanding of complex themes, subjects and language. Hearing the actors' inflection, tone and emphasis helps students to decipher difficult material and unfamiliar language.

• The arts have been proven effective in developing students' skills in problem solving, critical and creative thinking, dealing with ambiguity and complexity, integration of multiple skill sets, working with others.

• The arts develop social competencies, including collaboration and team work skills, social tolerance, and self-confidence.

• Arts-engaged low-income students are more likely than their non-arts-engaged peers to have attended and done well in college, obtained employment with a future, volunteered in their communities and participated in the political process by voting. Arts-engaged low-income students tend to perform more like average higher-income students.

• For competent readers and gifted students, audio plays offer individualized learning opportunities.

Learn More
Want to know more about the new Standards and how audio recordings can boost student achievement? Please visit the Learn More section on the right.