Professor Alex Mueller

Pepper Baker

ENGL 464

December 14, 2016

Unit Plan Project

Rationale:

My unit plan will focus on the Harlem Renaissance that will span over about a two-week period for a ninth grade English class. The first week, each day there will be a major, influential person introduced to the class along with a piece of their work. We will explore different works including poetry, music, art, and literature that will encapsulate an overall depiction of what the Harlem Renaissance represented to African Americans of the time. For the first week of the unit, I will introduce one person each day that will be the topic for the class, and we will discuss a major work by them and hold classroom discussion, group work, in class activities, and comparisons to how modern day culture and entertainment is influenced by the Harlem Renaissance.

I find it important to teach a more in depth, closer look into the Harlem Renaissance to ninth graders, because they are beginning high school which is the beginning of reading and analyzing more mature content. Racism is a very controversial topic and can be trivial when exposing racism of the past to students, but high school is the beginning of exploring texts that raise awareness to social issues. The Harlem Renaissance is a great start into students learning about social issues in America from the past and see how they’ve evolved, changed, or remain prevalent today. The way I plan to approach each lesson will engage the class and intrigue their interests in learning about the culture.

My pedagogical approach comes from Sheridan Blau’s book, The Literature Workshop, in chapter 1, “Lessons on Learning Literature.” He explains the difficulty of requiring students to uphold their own interpretive responsibility from literature, “Our students may do the reading themselves, but return to our classes prepared to take notes from us on what constitutes the correct interpretation of the text. Of course, whenever we cooperate in this well-established system, we may be encouraging many students not to read the text at all. We are certainly encouraging all of them to read it without any particular interpretive responsibility.” (Blau 20) My objectives are to give the students information of a person with background knowledge of the time and that person’s upbringing, but to have the student come to their own interpretations of how they decipher the reasoning behind the person’s work. I want to encourage students to think for themselves, spark debate, and be able to find evidence to support their interpretations.

During the second week, we will work on the essay assignment. The essay prompt will be to form an argument or opinion to support their interpretation of any of the people or their works we covered from the previous week and apply it to present day culture. They can argue that the culture has significantly changed from then to present day, it’s stayed relatively the same, or there’s similarities and differences of the past and present day. They can draw conclusions from the music, art, poetry, or literature samples that will help their topic. Freedom of expression exploded among African Americans during the Harlem Renaissance, and that’s exactly what I want the students to feel while going through this unit. They should be able to exercise their own freedom of interpretation and formulate an argument and evidence that will support it in the essay. After this unit, they should be able to accomplish the ability to interpret a work in their own creative way.

Lesson Plan 1:

Introduction to the Harlem Renaissance, applying historical context to meaning of poems

5 mins Warmup-Open up by asking students what they know about the Harlem Renaissance and write down their key words or ideas on the board. If no one has any ideas, then write key words on the board and then have the students say aloud more information under them.

Key words/ideas: 1920s, New York City, African-American Culture, Music, Writers, etc.

10 mins Introduction – Open the prepared introduction power point on the overhead projector. Ask the students to say aloud what they notice from the pictures on the first slide.Write down their answers underneath the key term it falls under.

Slide 1:

Then, have students take notes onthe key facts given about the Harlem Renaissance on the second slide.

Slide 2:

20 mins Group Activity – The third slide of the power point introduces Walter Dean Myers, who’s life span was shortly after the Harlem Renaissance and is not one of the major authors we will specifically focus on, but his written work was influenced by the culture of the Harlem Renaissance and his poem, Harlem: A Poem is a great introduction to the unit for students.

-Students will get a copy of Harlem: A Poem by Walter Dean Myers,break into groups of 3 (4 if necessary), and read the poem once all the way through.

-After they read it all the way through, have them circle, underline, or highlight all the places and locations mentioned in the poem and see if they can decipher what the locations represent and how it enhances the setting of the poem.

-Ask the students who the intended audience is

-Lastly, have their group pick a particular part of the poem that gives them a clear picture in their mind that they will be able to describe to the class out loud.

15 mins Ending Discussion – The students will volunteer to speak aloud what their group came up with and share. After they contribute their ideas, the teacher will tie together last comments and observations that the students might not have observed.

Homework: Read Langston Hughes’s poem Harlem and Claude Mckay’s America. Come to class tomorrow with 3 interesting facts of each poet.

Harlem: A Poem - Poem by Walter Dean Myers

They took the road in Waycross, Georgia

Skipped over the tracks in East St. Louis

Took the bus from Holly Springs

Hitched a ride from Gee's Bend

Took the long way through Memphis

The third deck down from Trinidad

A wrench of heart from Goree Island

To a place called

Harlem

Harlem was a promise

Of a better life,

of a place where a man

Didn't have to know his place

Simply because

He was Black

They brought a call

A song

First heard in the villages of

Ghana/Mali/Senegal

Calls and songs and shouts

Heavy hearted tambourine rhythms

Loosed in the hard city

Like a scream torn from the throat

Of an ancient clarinet

A new sound, raucous and sassy

Cascading over the asphalt village

Breaking against the black sky over

1-2-5 Street

Announcing Hallelujah

Riffing past resolution

Yellow, tan, brown, black, red

Green, gray, bright

Colors loud enough to be heard

Light on asphalt streets

Sun yellow shirts on burnt umber

Bodies

Demanding to be heard

Seen

Sending out warriors

From streets known to be

Mourning still as a lone radio tells us how

Jack Johnson

Joe Louis

Sugar Ray

Is doing with our hopes.

We hope

We pray

Our black skins

Reflecting the face of God

In storefront temples

Jive and Jehovah artists

Lay out the human canvas

The mood indigo

A chorus of summer herbs

Of mangoes and bar-b-que

Of perfumed sisters

Hip strutting past

Fried fish joints

On Lenox Avenue in steamy August

A carnival of children

People in the daytime streets

Ring-a-levio warriors

Stickball heroes

Hide-and-seek knights and ladies

Waiting to sing their own sweet songs

Living out their own slam-dunk dreams

Listening

For the coming of the blues

A weary blues that Langston knew

And Countee sung

A river of blues

Where Du Bois waded

And Baldwin preached

There is lilt

Tempo

Cadence

A language of darkness

Darkness known

Darkness sharpened at Mintons

Darkness lightened at the Cotton Club

Sent flying from Abyssinian Baptist

To the Apollo.

The uptown A

Rattles past 110th Street

Unreal to real

Relaxing the soul

Shango and Jesus

Asante and Mende

One people

A hundred different people

Huddled masses

And crowded dreams

Squares

Blocks, bricks

Fat, round woman in a rectangle

Sunday night gospel

"Precious Lord…take my hand,

Lead me on, let me stand…"

Caught by a full lipped

Full hipped Saint

Washing collard greens

In a cracked porcelain sink

Backing up Lady Day on the radio

Brother so black and blue

Patting a wide foot outside the

Too hot Walk-up

"Boy,

You ought to find the guys who told you

you could play some checkers

‘cause he done lied to you!"

Cracked reed and soprano sax laughter

Floats over

a fleet of funeral cars

In Harlem

Sparrows sit on fire escapes

Outside rent parties

To learn the tunes.

In Harlem

The wind doesn't blow past Smalls

It stops to listen to the sounds

Serious business

A poem, rhapsody tripping along

Striver's Row

Not getting it's metric feel soiled

On the well-swept walks

Hustling through the hard rain at two o'clock

In the morning to its next gig.

A huddle of horns

And a tinkle of glass

A note

Handed down from Marcus to Malcolm

To a brother

Too bad and too cool to give his name.

Sometimes despair

Makes the stoops shudder

Sometimes there are endless depths of pain

Singing a capella on street corners

And sometimes not.

Sometimes it is the artist

looking into the mirror

Painting a portrait of his own heart.

Place

Sound

Celebration

Me mories of feelings

Of place

A journey on the A train

That started on the banks of the Niger

And has not ended

Harlem.

Lesson Plan 2:

Langston Hughes and Claude McKay,reading emotion and dissecting imagery in poetry

10 min warm up: Have the students go around the class one by one and read one of their facts out loud. They cannot repeat one of their facts if a student before them had the same one. Write the two poet’s name’s on the board and list each new fact said under each poet.

15 min Notes: Show the background information of each poet on prepared slide on power point overhead and have students take notes from the warmup activity and the notes on the board.

25 min in Class Activity: distribute copies of each poem to the class. Start with Langston Hughes’s poem Harlem.Have a student read it one time through, out-loud.and then ask the class to circle each punctuation mark. Have another student read it out-loud again, but this time, ask them to read it with emphasis on the purpose the punctuation mark serves in the poem. Explain how punctuation enhances what the author wants the reader to take away from the poem.

Play the oral reading of Harlem on youtube, twice.

Open the discussion to the class by asking if the reader’s voice conveyed more meaning to the poem and is so, in what ways was it different than when the student read it previously.

Open discussion for the pictures that were displayed with the oral reading by asking the students what the pictures showed. Define imagery on the board and have the students individually pick parts of the poem where Hughes used sight, hearing, taste, smell, or feeling. Discuss what they picked out loud.

Close the discussion by reiterating how important it is when authors include punctuation or any type of elements that convey emotion or deeper meaning in a poem

Homework: Have students read Claude McKay’s poem Americaand have them annotate the poem by dissecting the emotions and imagery conveyed in the poem.

Harlem

By Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore—

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over—

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

America

By Claude McKay

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,

And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth,

Stealing my breath of life, I will confess

I love this cultured hell that tests my youth.

Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,

Giving me strength erect against her hate,

Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.

Yet, as a rebel fronts a king in state,

I stand within her walls with not a shred

Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.

Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,

And see her might and granite wonders there,

Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand,

Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

Lesson Plan 3

Billie Holiday–Learning HR influence on culture today

5-7 min Warm Up – ask for about 2-3 volunteers to share their findings of emotions and imagery from the Claude McKay homework. Collect the annotated poems for a homework grade.

15 mins Background Information– introduce Billie Holiday and Louie Armstrong on Power Point slides overhead with a few facts to add to their background notes for the week. Make sure to touch lightly on the role of women during this time and how women in music were portrayed.

25 mins in Class Lecture and Group Work Distribute copies of the lyrics to “God Bless the Child” and read it out loud to the class once all the way through. Then, give them about 3 minutes to circle anything that stands out to them, that they understand, or don’t understand about the song. Come together as a class and talk about what they found. Clarify anything they are confused about and dig further into anything they seem to understand.

-Ask them how the lyrics of the poem relate to society today or if they can display any examples they might have personally or know from others (i.e. celebrity lifestyles)

-Show the youtube clip of Billie Armstrong singing “God Bless the Child”

-Ask students to explain anything that stands out to them that pertains to the Harlem Renaissance (i.e. clothing, the genre of the song, the instruments in the background, the stage set up, etc.)

-Show the clip of Whitney Houston singing “God Bless the Child” in 1997

-Ask the students the same question. Have them distinguish similarities or differences between the two videos and how the times have changed.

Homework: Have the students watch “The Blues are Brewin” which is a collaboration with Louie Armstrong and Billie Holiday. Look up the lyrics of the song and construct your own contemporary version of a music video with the same song. Cast the singers, choose the setting, decide what instruments you’d use, costumes they’d wear, and the target audience.

"God Bless the Child"

Billie Holiday

Them that's got shall have

Them that's not shall lose

So the Bible says and it still is news

Mama may have, Papa may have

But God bless the child that's got his own, that's got his own

Yes the strong get smart

While the weak ones fade

Empty pockets don't ever make the grade

Mama may have, Papa may have

But God bless the child that's got his own, that's got his own

Money, you've got lots of friends

They're crowding around your door

But when you're gone and spending ends

They don't come no more

Rich relations give crusts of bread and such

You can help yourself, but don't take too much

Mama may have, Papa may have

But God bless the child that's got his own, that's got his own

Money you've got lots of friends

They're crowding around your door

But when you're gone and spending ends

They don't come no more

Rich relations give crusts of bread and such

You can help yourself, but don't take too much

Mama may have, Papa may have

But God bless the child that's got his own, that's got his own

Here just don't worry about nothing cause he's got his own