Life Is a Dream: an adaptation of the classic Spanish play with special features to improve reading and vocabulary aligned with the Common Core State Standards (Common Core Plays)

BIG plays is a series of adaptations of classic plays for grades 3-12 in line with the Common Core State Standards which call for the inclusion of drama. The script is simplified and full of academic and domain-specific words. Our "HyperGloss" Contextual Glossary provides student-friendly descriptions of words encountered in or related to the text. These paperbacks are one element of our multimedia approach to English Language Arts. Our Visual Radio Play versions are self-contained units, with audio matched to annotated scripts to scaffold reading, and with on-board quizzes that develop the skills prescribed by the Common Core State Standards. Dramatic texts challenge the reader in terms of structure, language, and levels of meaning. In fact, the reading levels in this play - labeled scene-by-scene, range from grade 1.8 to grade 5.1, according to Flesch-Kincaid, and yet the play involves multiple plots, multicultural background, asides, secrets, disguises, and even a Shakespearean-style clown character whose arch comments provide comic relief. Authentic work on dramatic texts, work of the kind undertaken by professional theater artists, requires reading the text over and over again, analyzing it from many points of view, and applying connections from the actors' own lives. All of these practices are ideal for educational purposes as well. Life Is A Dream, written by Calderón de la Barca in 1635, concerns a Polish king who is traumatized by evil omens accompanying the birth of his son. The king secretly has the boy locked in a cave and raised by a jailer. The king decides to release the now-grown Segismundo in hopes that the young man will disprove his terrible horoscope. Segismundo himself, of course, is so resentful about his years of imprisonment, that when he learns he is really a prince, he literally throws a servant out of a window. The king orders Segismundo returned to the cave and tells his jailer to convince the savage prince that the palace experience was just a dream. Segismundo doesn’t stay jailed, because there are other plots going on, but the experience does bring about in Segismundo a profound change. The lesson he learns is that life is transient, and the conclusion he draws is always to act with greater reason, not to give in to fitful rages, nor to attach too much importance to worldly position and power.