WEEK 1, WEDNESDAY

OBJECTIVES:

Students should reflect on their personal choices recorded in their journals in order to clarify their sense of what it means to be living in an urban environment today. They will begin to expand on the History of Rap timeline by exploring the 1920’s, the Jazz Age, the Harlem Renaissance, and Langston Hughes. By comparing and constrasting song with poetry, they should start to see how contemporary popular forms like rap are rooted in earlier periods and continue to develop the poetic forms used by Afro-American artists to reveal the difficulties of urban life, the burdens of the past and joys of self-expression.

MATERIALS:

Non-fiction Hand-outs: History of Rap; Biography of Langston Hughes

Websites: African American World PBS

The Blues PBS

Kurtis Blow Presents the History of Rap, Vol. 1 The Genesis

PROCEDURES

1. Review: rap, poetic terms
2. Discuss homework in whole group. Questions: When you wrote your answer, what kind of rap were you thinking about? What social or personal conditions are reflected in rap’s choice of subjects and style of presentation.
3. Set goals for day: read Weary Blues, biography of Langston Hughes, compare his poem to The Message.
4. Read Hughes biography and locate his life in the History of Rap timeline and locate Harlem geographically. Use websites to supplement after school.
5. Read poem silently, then aloud
6. Discuss the poem’s theme, plot, setting, characters, tone, rhythm. Questions: Who is weary? Why? Where is the poem set? Why does Hughes use the term, ‘Negro’? Is this derogatory? What happens? Where is Lenox Ave.? Why is the location significant? Who is speaking? Who singing?
7. Compare Weary Blues to The Message in small groups
8. Locate examples to support comparisons or contrasts
9. Discuss the description of the City in both works: find descriptions, similes, metaphors, personifications.
10. Homework in journal: How would you describe your city, its people, problems, beauties, dreams, nightmares, history, future?

ASSESSMENT:

Students will demonstrate their knowledge of poetic terms by applying them to a reading of poem, The Weary Blues, and comparing it to The Message. They will practice their cognitive reading skills through an examination of Hughes’s biography, then use that factual knowledge to expand their timeline. They will use the poetic concepts to develop an interpretation of both works through the thematic focus of their vision of urban life. By observing the elements of continuity, students should begin to see that the past is not alien or irrelevant to their own current experiences and by identifying differences in style they will be prompted to offer explanations for the changes which will lead them into further study. By preparing them for the themes of migration, and the historic developments leading to and from that experience, students will be guided to explore the themes of complex identities and community which will be considered in the following weeks. Finally, they will attempt to integrate these thoughts, and practice expositional writing skills in their journal as they describe their city; thereby building a foundation that they will be able to use in their culminating essay in week 4.

NOTES:

Keep moving, find suitable reader, supplement vocabulary as needed.

Lesson Plan 1

Lesson Plan 3

Lesson Plan 4

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