Teacher Support

"Comprehensive Teacher's Manuals"
Supplying the Secret to Success for Our Land Publications

A unique concept

In each Our Land Publication much supplemental information not essential to every student is shifted from the lesson sheets to the Comprehensive Teacher's Manual. In this way, the teacher can draw from the manual to provide just the right volume of study material needed without overwhelming or intimidating students.

Contents

Each manual contains the student's text with correct responses, comments on them, expanded lessons, optional activities, many copy masters, test answer guides, additional exercises, statements of principle, etc.

Examples of these are offered below.

Special links: More about Specific Programs, Applications, and Other Matters

Dear Educator:

An important distinction of this approach compared with conventional textbooks is removal of non-essential content from the student text to the teacher manuals. Thus, students are confronted only with the minimum material necessary to a basic understanding of the subject. This does not reduce available text nor does it appreciably increase the teacher's burden.

The facts are:

  • Very few teachers complete a textbook.
    They are forced to skip portions or stop before the end. Either way study is incomplete.

  • Textbooks are written to flow chapter by chapter without interruption or omission.
    Continuity is necessary to their application. When chapters or even small portions are omitted, continuity is often lost and study becomes fragmented.

  • To maintain continuity teachers commonly adjust study to fit slower learners.
    This diminishes the amount of material covered and handicaps more apt learners.

  • Newspapers are not structured like textbooks
    Articles are naturally topical and deal with events and people complete in and of themselves. (No one reads an entire newspaper, yet continuity is not lost.) History is presented logically and orderly. After all, what is "history" but yesterday's "news"? Today's "news" will be tomorrow's "history"!

  • Effects common to textbook studies include:
    1. Intimidation & boredom
    2. A confused course flow
    3. An incomplete study
    4. Teaching to the lowest common denominator
    5. Loss of interest by better, more eager learners

    • How these manuals work

    Manuals for each program contain every issue in it and discuss each one separately. Each section begins with an overview and summary which also serves as a course outline. The following example is a portion of that in the opening issue of Our Land of Liberty.

    A lesson list including priority and approximate difficulty rating is also provided as well as a vocabulary log and a chronological index.

    Organization of pages
    The lesson reviews that follow the summary page are generally divided into two columns. A portion is shaded and is the student's running text with expected responses in italics where they occur.

    News articles and activities are also included, but photo captions and most supplemental illustrations are not. Most maps are omitted but may be included as copy masters. Open boxes (described in the chart below) contain comments and helps applicable to the adjacent lesson text. Many add questions (and answers) the teacher may add. (See Testing & Assessment.

    By reading the text and comments for each lesson prior to classroom use, you will be better equipped to teach it.
    Remember: Comments and suggestions are provided only as a guide.

    Comment boxes

    Response boxes

    Principle boxes
     Occasionally you will encounter a box with a dashed border like this:

    Reaction Time
     Each issue ends with a box containing a series of topics for class discussion. In this manual, comments on discussion topics are enclosed in boxes like this:

    Procedure:

  • Before teaching any lesson in the issue, read the overview and summary.
  • Select from three-to-five of the numbered topics that you particularly want your students to study.
  • Highlight these in your manual as a help to focus the study and as a guide for use in future years.
  • Review the lesson list and note in pencil those which particularly support the topics you have targeted.
    Lesson priorities given are subjective.Your opinion may differ.
  • Highlight the lessons you select and focus on them.
  • Review any copy master listed that may further aid your study.
  • Read the text for each lesson and all comments pertaining to the ones you have chosen.

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