Cracking the Indiana IAS Code: A Teacher's Guide to Reading Theatre Standards Like a Pro
Why This Matters More Than You'd Think
If you're like me, you've probably glanced at an Indiana IAS standard, felt your eyes glaze over at the alphanumeric soup, and moved on. But here's the thing: understanding exactly what those codes mean saves you enormous amounts of planning time and helps you actually teach what Indiana expects students to know. When you can decode a standard like TH:Cn12.1.1.a, you're not just reading requirements—you're unlocking what your students need to demonstrate on ILEARN and in your classroom.
Let me break down how Indiana's system works, using real theatre standards as examples. Once you see the pattern, you'll apply it across every standard you encounter.
The First Part: Subject Area (The Letters Before the Colon)
Start from the left. That TH at the beginning stands for Theatre. Simple enough. But this matters because Indiana's IAS covers multiple arts disciplines—you'll also see VA for Visual Arts, MU for Music, and DA for Dance. Knowing your subject identifier immediately tells you whether you're looking at a standard for your content or accidentally reading someone else's curriculum map.
In our examples, we're working with Theatre standards throughout, so everything starts with TH.
The Second Part: Strand (The Letters After the Colon)
After that colon comes two letters that identify which strand you're in. Think of strands as the big buckets that organize what theatre instruction looks like. Indiana uses these theatre strands:
- Cr = Create
- Pr = Perform
- Re = Respond
- Cn = Connect
In all my examples, I'm looking at Cn standards, which are Connection standards. These are about relating theatre to culture, history, society, and other art forms. This strand asks students to think beyond just doing theatre—it asks them to understand theatre's place in the world.
Why does the strand matter for your planning? Because Indiana assesses these strands somewhat differently. ILEARN includes questions across all four strands, but how you teach and assess a Create standard looks different from how you teach a Connect standard. A Create standard might involve students making something new. A Connect standard involves analysis and comparison. Knowing which strand you're teaching shapes your lesson design from the start.
The Third Part: Grade Band and Standard Number
Now we get to the numbers. Indiana organizes theatre standards by grade bands: 9-12 for high school. That first number tells you the grade band.
Look at TH:Cn12.1.1.b. The 12 tells you this is a 9-12 (grades 9 through 12) standard. A standard labeled TH:Cn11 would be for grades 6-8, and TH:Cn10 would be for grades 3-5. (Indiana's numbering bumps up by one for each band, which takes a second to get used to but makes sense once you see the pattern.)
The numbers that follow—like .1.1—show you the hierarchy within that standard. The first 1 after the grade band represents the overarching standard. Then each subsequent number breaks it down into smaller, more specific learning objectives.
The Final Letter: Your Specific Learning Target
At the very end, you'll see a lowercase letter like a or b. This is your actual, teachable learning target. This is what you put in your unit plans. This is what students demonstrate.
TH:Cn12.1.1.a reads: "Identify similarities and differences in stories from one's own community in a guided drama experience." That .a is specific and actionable. There's also a .b at the same level: "Collaborate on the creation of a short scene based on a fictional literary source in a guided drama experience." Both are Cn12.1.1 standards, but they're different enough that you might teach them separately or combine them depending on your unit.
Putting It All Together: A Real Example
TH:Cn11.1.1.a breaks down like this:
- TH = Theatre
- Cn = Connection strand
- 11 = Grades 6-8
- .1.1.a = The specific learning target (in this case, applying skills from different art forms in a guided drama experience)
Once you see that this is a middle school Connection standard, you know students need to think about how theatre connects to other subjects and art forms—not just perform, but synthesize and compare.
How This Helps Your ILEARN Prep
Indiana's ILEARN assessment includes items tied to these standards. When you see a question on ILEARN that asks students to compare theatre to another art form, you know it's assessing something in the Cn strand. When you see a question about creating an original piece, that's likely Cr. Understanding the code structure helps you anticipate what kinds of thinking students need to practice all year.
Start bookmarking the specific standards you teach. Write them in your unit plans exactly as they appear. When you're ready to create assessments, reference the letter at the end—that's your actual learning objective. Your students don't need to memorize the codes, but you should know them cold.