Teacher teams up with local bottling company to introduce new curriculum

By WILL STEWART / Staff Reporter for the Southern Standard

Dr Pepper rules!: Bobby Ray Elementary first-graders Gavin Laxon, left, and Sarah Knowles make use of the Ruler Art curriculum developed by their teacher, Carol Neal. (Will Stewart photo)

When she wasn’t able to find any supplemental activities giving ruler practice to her young students, Bobby Ray Elementary first-grade teacher and resident artist Carol Neal simply decided to create her own.

Her result, Ruler Art, gives young students a fun way to improve their accuracy in drawing lines with rulers, while at the same time practicing a math or language arts skill, which is built into every Ruler Art activity.

A hit inside her own classroom, as well as those of her fellow teachers at Bobby Ray, Ruler Art has now, with the financial support of Dr Pepper, made its way into every first-grade classroom in Warren County.

“Our math textbooks contain only one ruler part, so when we got there I would make my own sheets and the students thought it was wonderful,” Neal said of her inspiration. “From that point I just got a wild hair and created Ruler Art.”

While centering on a connect-the-dots theme, the Ruler Art curriculum also integrates a number of academic themes.

“It’s great because it fits the arts into the curriculum, which often are excluded with our big focus on reading. But reading is included in Ruler Art too, as is math, as children connect their ABCs and 123s. One thing builds on another,” Neal said.

Ruler Art packets, distributed to every first-grade teacher in the county, as well as some first-grade teachers in surrounding counties, contain a collection of connect-the-dot sheets of varying levels of difficulty and creative expression. Each packet also contains a classroom set of rulers and pencils.

Neal said with her background in art, developing the curriculum was not that difficult. The activities, she added, are fun for students and easy for teachers to use and to duplicate. Additionally, they integrate well into any larger curriculum and can be adapted for traditional or alternative school calendars.