Teacher Study Guide

OBJECTIVE OF PERFORMANCES:

As Educators, we all recognize that nothing in the curriculum is more important to a Child's Early Education than those experiences, which reinforce the learning of literacy. Not just reading, but writing, thinking, talking, listening, and creating. All of these skills and concepts are crucial to the educational, psychological, and social well being of the young Student. Efforts to welcome, understand, and affirm all students--and to treat their cultural and linguistic backgrounds as equally valid and important--should be reflected in every facet of the school environment.

SUMMARY OF THE PROGRAM:

Through imaginative songs and narrative, The Battersby Duo demonstrates to Students that creative writing is fun, and that readers make better writers. A variety of music, poetry, and interactive theatrics provide a platform on which The Battersby Duo demonstrates the power of the written word. Buckle your seat belts as the Duo takes their audience on a journey that is destined to challenge and inspire. By playing with language, The Battersby Duo encourages Students to exercise their minds with fast paced participation. Pseudonyms, and poems, palindromes, and synonyms are the backdrop for this bolt of academic lightning that streaks to Theatres and Elementary Schools throughout the USA

I. PRE-PERFORMANCE

A. Have Students visit The Battersby Duo web site at www.battersbyduo.com and listen to several songs written by the Duo. Lyrics are available on the same web site. Songs that will be performed during each Assembly program are as follows: The Copycat Song, I’m a Germ, Elephants Toenails, Please Read, Colour Me Eric and The Bumble Bee Blues. Have Students read the lyrics while the song is playing. All downloads on the Web Site are free of charge. www.battersbyduo.com/lyrics.htm

B. Have students list their favorite Authors and Books

C. The resources provided by The American Library Association are extensive. Teachers and students can go to the web site www.booklist.com to find many activities as well as much information on the subject. There are also many links to other sites and organizations for the students to visit.

D. A wonderful literacy resource that is both fun and educational is Reading is Fundamental

B. VOCABULARY USED IN A BATTERSBY CONCERT

Linguistic intelligence: The capacity to use words effectively, orally or written.

Logical-Mathematical Intelligence: The capacity to use numbers effectively and to reason well.

Spatial Intelligence: The ability to perceive the visual-spatial world accurately and to perform transformations upon those perceptions.

Kinesthetic Intelligence: Expertise in using one's body to express ideas and feelings.

Musical Intelligence: The capacities to perceive, discriminate, transform, and express musical forms.

Metaphor: A metaphor is, commonly, a figure of speech used to paint one concept with the attributes normally associated with another

Synonyms are different words with similar or identical meanings and are interchangeable

Antonyms: are word pairs that are opposite in meaning, such as hot and cold, fat and thin, and up and down. Words may have different antonyms, depending on the meaning. Both long and tall are antonyms of short

Noun: The word "noun" derives from the Latin nomen meaning "name", and a traditional definition of nouns is that they are all and only those expressions that refer to a person, place, thing, event, substance, quality, or idea.

Palindrome: is a word, phrase, number or other sequence of units (such as a strand of DNA) that has the property of reading the same in either direction (the adjustment of punctuation and spaces between words is generally permitted). The word "palindrome" comes from the Greek palin (pa???) "back" and dromos (d?óµ??) "way, direction". Composing literature in palindromes is an example of constrained writing

Simile: is a figure of speech in which the subject is compared to another subject. Frequently, similes are marked by use of the words like or as, "The snow was like a blanket". However, "The snow blanketed the earth" is also a simile and not a metaphor because the verb blanketed is a shortened form of the phrase covered like a blanket. A few other examples are "The deer ran like the wind", "The raindrops sounded as popcorn kernels popping", and "the lullaby was like the hush of the winter."

Pun: is a figure of speech, which consists of a deliberate confusion of similar words or phrases for rhetorical effect, whether humorous or serious. A pun can rely on the assumed equivalency of multiple similar horse words (homonymy), of different shades of meaning of one word (polysemy), or of a literal meaning with a metaphor. Bad puns are often considered to be cheesy.

Pseudonym: is a fictitious name used by an individual as an alternative to his or her legal name. A pseudonym is distinct from an allonym, which is the name of another actual person assumed by one person, usually historical, in authorship of a work of art; e.g., when ghostwriting a book or play, or in parody, or when using a front such as by screenwriters blacklisted in Hollywood in the '50s, '60s, and '70s. To be pseudonymous means that the person is using a pseudonym

Adjective: is a part of speech which modifies a noun, usually describing it or making its meaning more specific. However, adjectives are not a universally recognized word class; in other words, some languages do not have any adjectives. The Chinese languages, for example, have no adjectives; all the words that are translated into English as adjectives are, in fact, stative verbs.

Verb: is a part of speech that usually denotes action ("bring", "read"), occurrence ("decompose", "glitter"), or a state of being ("exist", "stand"). Depending on the language, a verb may vary in form according to many factors, possibly including its tense, aspect, mood and voice. It may also agree with the person, gender, and/or number of some of its arguments (subject, object, etc.)

II. PERFORMANCE HIGHLIGHTS

We want the Students to become interested in reading and writing. The more they read the more they succeed. As published Authors we show students how to write a song, a poem and a story. We teach them how to conjugate. We challenge students to define, decline and refine adjectives, adverbs, nouns, prepositions, words, sentences, paragraphs, and chapter and verse and exhort and plead for Students to read; and we do it in a fun and interactive manner.

 III. PERFORMANCE FOLLOW-UP ACTIVITIES

A. Have a literature scavenger hunt to find 5 great books. Teachers can download the pages needed for this activity from the ALA web site www.booklist.com or simply pay a visit to the media center.

B. Have students write a song together and separately. Give them a topic such as “food” and see if they can describe their favorite food in 4 lines and put music to it. This will personalize the subject matter and add a degree of interest to the project.

C. Go back to The Battersby Duo web site at www.battersbyduo.com and select the 3 favorite songs of the whole class and learn them. Lyrics and audio streaming are offered free of charge at www.battersbyduo.com/lyrics.htm By listening to songs and reading along with them as they are playing, Students master the art of language, nuance and comprehension in a fun and playful environment.

IV. STUDENT RESOURCES

www.ala.org has many suggestions, games and resources, which follow up in great detail on the concepts presented in the show. This and www.battersbyduo.com would provide the students with an educational and entertaining resource.

V. TEACHER RESOURCES

School Library Journal, The American Library Association and your local Library are wonderful resources to encourage your Students to learn the importance of definition, structure, meter, grammar, pronunciation and the usage of Puns and Spoonerisms. All of these ingredients flow and cascade through the literary jungles of a Battersby Duo program.

Contact Information

E Mail: batduo@bellsouth.net Telephone: 352.799.3110 Fax: 352.544.0146 Web Site: www.battersbyduo.com