Sample Lessons
Essential Questions
How does music inspire poetry? How does poetry inspire music? Why is inspiration important? How does inspiration encourage voice? Why is voice important? Why is poetry an effective medium for voice?
Many questions will drive the varying learning activities, but it is the last question that is central to the unit. It is at the heart of the lessons. Why is poetry an effective medium for voice?
Poetry can speak for the silenced. Poetry can express what society does not say. Poetry can move with an era and it can move against it. It can move the reader and the listener. It can even move the writer. Poetry can evoke change. It can keep us from forgetting. Poetry can cry for us. It can laugh. It can scoff. Poetry can turn words into instruments. It can give us a sound that lets us hear who we are. It can sing.
Standards, Benchmarks and Learning Targets
New Mexico Content Standards address what all students should know within the subject area. Language Arts has three content standards: 1. Students will apply strategies and skills to comprehend information that is read, heard, and viewed; 2. Students will communicate effectively through speaking and writing; and 3. Students will use literature and media to develop an understanding of people, societies, and the self.
Each content standard is further developed in benchmarks, which are level specific checkpoints (grades 9 – 12 have one benchmark). Performance standards are listed under benchmarks as concrete examples of what students should know and be able to do. As part of a mission to develop vertical alignment, teachers in Santa Fe schools have translated performance standards into student-friendly language now called learning targets.
I have written the learning targets in first person to reflect the student's voice. The learning targets correspond to specific activities and finally to the assessment at the end of the lesson. The lessons provided are a closer look at the strategies listed above. I have taken three of the learning quadrants used in Bernice McCarthy's 4Mat to illustrate first the connection to the concept, second, the learning of new material, and third, the practice of new knowledge. The fourth quadrant asks students to create something new based on their new knowledge. The fourth quadrant contains the final performance assessment. At the end of the unit, students will use the shared elements of poetry and music to show how poetry is an effective medium for voice.
The Good Song
Learning Targets
I can deliver an informative presentation; I can establish and defend a point of view; I can design and apply criteria for evaluating my oral presentation; I can explain my ideas in a clear, logical and comprehensive manner.
Activity
1. Ask students ahead of time to bring a favorite song to class. They must firmly believe that it is a "good" song (for any reason), as they will have to defend their position. I remind them to keep their audience in mind when they select their "good" song. If a member of the class feels offended, the student will have to explain why something that offends contributes to what makes the song good. This activity has always been a lot of fun, and the selection of songs has been surprisingly eclectic. One of the presentations even led to a battle between Carlos Santana and Jimi Hendrix.
2. Before playing any music, students develop criteria for what makes a good song. At this point, we are still in the realm of what the students already know, so it is not necessary to get overly technical. Some students may say a good song is one you can dance to. Others may comment on the subtlety of internal rhyme. Talk to students about dissonance and whether that occurs in "good" songs. Keep a list where it is visible.
3. Students take turns playing music. They defend their song using their criteria, and then the rest of the class gets a shot at it. Open up the discussion. Do other students agree that the song is good? What specifically makes it good or not good? The focus on specific details will help students go beyond an initial emotional response. This exercise will lend itself to helping students understand what makes a "good" essay.
4. Discuss: Why do people like some music but not all music? Does a certain kind of music attract a certain kind of personality? What kind of personality do you think the singer has? Use prior knowledge and speculation to create a persona behind the voice. How does the musician use singing, melody, rhythm, or rhyme as voice? The musician may express a certain emotion, attitude or style through the sounds of words or music. Remember that voice is a form of expression and a sense of identity and power. The voice may be used to express emotion, establish a relationship to the world, and encourage change. The musician has a reason for engaging in a kind of conversation rather than remaining silent. What inspires the musician to use his or her voice? What is the purpose of the song?
5. Tell a story, write a poem, or complete a journal entry that speculates why the singer / musician chose NOT to be silent about his or her topic. Use ideas generated from the discussion. What inspired the poet to move from silence to voice in order to create the song? Students are encouraged to use their imaginations, as it is not likely that the artist will be there to provide facts. However, the connections between the song and the possible points of inspiration should be reasonable. This exercise helps students begin to think about the reasons behind creating art. As they think about what may inspire someone else, they plant the seeds for a deeper understanding of literature – and a better understanding of their own sources of inspiration.
6. Read the stories or poems. Discuss the plausibility of scenarios.
Assessment
The student is able to develop criteria and evaluate material, deliver a presentation about what makes a particular song good, discuss voice in terms of musical expression, and write a reasonable speculation about the inspiration behind a song.
A Survey of Voice: "Po' Boy Blues"
Learning Targets
I can evaluate information by posting questions, responding personally, exploring issues, and identifying writing techniques; I can analyze and explain author's purpose, tone, perspective and message; I can analyze and interpret the significance of literary movements as related to social movements and historical periods; I can read and analyze literary works and identify significant themes and concepts as they relate to me; I can use language that is appropriate for my purpose and audience.
Activity
1. Listen to excerpts from blues songs. Although Muddy Waters recorded in the 1940s and later, his rhythm and lyrics are immediately engaging, providing a nice introduction to blues. "Louisiana Blues" clearly follows the structure of repeating the first two lines and using end-rhyme for the third: "I'm going down in Louisiana, baby, behind the sun /I'm going down in Louisiana, honey, behind the sun /Well, you know I just found out my troubles just begun." Bessie Smith, a Harlem Renaissance blues musician, also uses this structure in "Chicago Blues," a song that also connects blues to a city: "Late last night I stole away and cried/ late last night I stole away and cried / Had the blues for Chicago, and I just can't be satisfied."
2. Students take notes while listening to Muddy Waters (or another engaging blues musician). What kind of emotion does this song express? What is the singer saying? Using Cornell notes, students write "Emotion expressed in song" and "Thoughts expressed by singer" on the left margins and write their own ideas on the right.
3. Discuss the emotion and thoughts expressed. Examine the repetition of lines, which can be traced back to the form of W.C. Handy.
4. Listen to Bessie Smith (or another Harlem Renaissance blues musician) and continue to take notes. What are the similarities between Muddy Waters and Bessie Smith?
5. Discuss the similarities. Pay close attention to structure.
6. Read "Po' Boy Blues" by Langston Hughes. The blues structure appears in all four stanzas. For example, "I fell in love with/ A gal I thought was kind" is repeated once and followed by "She made me lose ma money / An' almost lose ma mind." 10 Discuss the thoughts and feelings expressed by the speaker. The poem begins by lamenting the need to leave home, a place of sunshine, for a colder world in the North. He speaks about having to face difficulty in spite of being "a good boy" and about experiencing loss as a result of falling in love. The poem ends with the speaker saying he's so weary, he wishes he'd never been born.
The first three stanzas express being let down by something or someone. The speaker is clearly disappointed with the world. The bitterness is conveyed immediately with an impression of coldness in the first stanza and continues through the next two. The use of the derogatory label "good boy" in the second stanza conveys an ironic tone and projects an image of someone putting on a particular act or persona for others – a persona that does little to alleviate the hard times ahead. In the third stanza, the speaker is a victim of cruelty by someone he thought was kind. Here, as in the first stanza, the speaker is worse off than he was before he acted on his hopes. He emphasizes his weariness in the last stanza. The word "weary" implies being tired physically as well as mentally. It is a complaint about continuing something that sucks out one's energy, yet implies relying on the very last bit of one's resources in order to endure.
Hughes wrote "Po' Boy Blues" in 1926, shortly after the Reconstruction era. African Americans migrated to northern cities to escape the segregation and lynching of the South. The industrialization of the North also provided African Americans with job opportunities. New York City, home of the Harlem Renaissance, attracted intellectuals and artists who advocated societal change for a better world. The promise of cultural transcendence from a state of oppression to a place of respect and equality lingered and teased Harlem Renaissance writers. Their encounters with people may have been "cold," the roles they adopted may have been less than helpful, and the strenuous investments of both body and mind may have been the cause of great loss ("She made me lose ma money / An almost lose ma mind"). In the end, one relies on the last reserves of energy even to begin a new endeavor ("Weary, weary, / early, early in de morn"), perpetuating a sense of never quite reaching the promise of a "richer " life—in every sense of the term.
7. Students work with a partner (optional) and use the structure of a blues poem to write about a disappointing event. Students can use humor. Although the events in "Po' Boy Blues" are depressing, the poem as a whole uses short lines and rhyme to give it a lighter and slightly humorous mood that undercuts the weariness. Students now have an opportunity to use their "woe-is-me" voices in a way that may even poke fun at an otherwise disappointing situation. Brainstorm topics together to get students started. Topics may include a sporting event that ends badly, an awkward date, an unfortunate vacation, a car that turns out to be a lemon, an unexpected grade, or anything else worthy of complaint.
Each stanza may consist of only three lines and one rhyme: two lines repeated, the third line rhymes. This will provide a structure and allow students to create clever rhymes in an otherwise simple form. Students work toward capturing the mood expressed in the blues songs.
8. Read blues poems with special attention paid to vocal intonations heard in songs.
Assessment
The student responds personally, asks questions, and explores issues during the close reading and discussion of poem. The student takes notes and explains the author's purpose, tone, perspective and message, and states the significance of the Harlem Renaissance as it pertains to the poem; the student demonstrates significant themes, concepts, and blues writing style by creating and reading an original poem that relates to his or own life.
A Battle of Voice
Learning Targets
I can recognize a writer's style, tone and other rhetorical strategies; I can analyze texts and synthesize ideas; I can design and apply criteria for evaluating my oral presentation; and I can design and deliver an effective oral presentation by using clear enunciation, and gestures appropriate for a particular audience.
Activity
1. Toward the end of the unit, each student selects a poem that connects to his or her own voice. The poem may reflect the student's opinion about a topic or issue, it may portray an experience that a student has had, or it may be written in a style that is similar to the student's own style of writing.
2. The student gets to know his or her own poem by writing a review. He or she explains why the poem is "good" by describing the use of literary elements and showing historical and musical connections. (This is actually the assessment piece for the second quadrant of learning, or the end of the survey of voices.)
3. Students are asked to think about how their poems would be read or performed. They watch excerpts from SlamNation, Slam!, Def Poetry Jam, Love Jones, Poetic Justice or 8 Mile. A careful screening will provide excerpts appropriate for schools with strict language restrictions. Students give the viewed performances a score from 1.0 to 10 .0 (using decimals for scores in between) and discuss what they like or don't like about the poems or performances. The class designs a rubric to evaluate body language, vocal intonations, enunciation, diction, musical attributes and rhythm, and the overall message of the poem.
4. Students prepare to battle their poems by becoming familiar with the procedure. Although the basic structure of the battle loosely follows a typical slam, there are variations:
- Three people make up a team
- If the number of students in the class prevent groups of three, a fourth person joins a team and does works with a partner on one poem
- The team competes in three different rounds
- Each person from the team competes in a separate round by reciting one poem
- One person from each team acts as a judge for the other teams
- The judges give each reading a score from 1.0 to 10.0 (slam using decimals to prevent a tie)
- The scorekeeper subtracts the highest and lowest scores and adds the remaining scores.
- Scores are reported at the end of each round
- The team with the highest combined score wins the battle (and the prize!)
The above procedure is designed to allow every student to recite a poem. Another variation is to drop teams at each round so only three teams compete in the final round. This would heighten the competitive atmosphere and not all students would be able to read. Students can also recite each poem together to alleviate the element of stage fright. A group recitation would also allow teams to be dropped as the competition continues – at least everyone would have read something once. These are variations that can be modified by the individual teacher.
5. Students form groups of three (or four, if necessary). Each student practices reading and memorizing the poem with the help of the team (yes, students will strengthen those memorization skills!). Team members give feedback based on the scoring of the viewed performers and the discussions about body language, vocal intonations, etc. The team members use the class-designed rubric as a guide. Team members decide which poem will go first, second and third. Typically, a slam poet will begin with his or her strongest piece as a way to "seduce" the audience and end with the second strongest piece, as the competition gets tougher as the slam continues. Slam poets, however, do vary on this strategy.
It is important for students to coach and support their teammates. Students are allowed time in class to practice and refine recitations.
6. Poetry teams compete. Teams draw numbers for the order in which they will compete. They draw for each round to provide variety. During the competition, audience members are told that it's okay to boo the judges for the score (often judges give lower scores than the audience prefers), but to always respect the poet (in this case, the performer). We like to say, "Applaud the poet, not the score" in classroom slams. Students will be graded based on the rubric, not the score.
Team members are allowed to be "on book" for the performer. In other words, one member of the team can hold a copy of the poem and feed the performer lines if he or she forgets.
It's a good idea to have a break – with a snack – between rounds. Students can help contribute and organize the food element of the performance. The presence of food will make the event feel more like a party, even though they are completing challenging work.
The emphasis of this lesson is on interpreting material and being able to give an oral presentation that requires more than a flat reading. Memorization will demand a closer look at the poem in question. Students will be aware of word choice as well as the tone behind the words. Students will also need to pay close attention to the inherent rhythm of a poem, as rhythmic patterns aid in memorization. The imagery of a poem will also stand out when students learn to picture what they are saying. A deep understanding of the speaker's meaning is often necessary in order to fully achieve memorization. Another memorization technique is to use chunking and repetition. The student reads the first line or short phrase over and over again until it is memorized, reads the second line until it is memorized, then returns to the beginning and reads the two lines together. Next, the reader memorizes the third line, returns to the beginning again, and so on, until the whole stanza is memorized. The second stanza is memorized in the same manner. Students can make their own chunks by separating different ideas or thoughts within the poem.
This lesson functions as a warm up for the fourth quadrant of learning, where the student creates something of his or her own. The unit ends with a showcase of original work. The challenging aspect of the final unit project is not competition, but originality. The teacher offers feedback regarding the recitation and provides suggestions for the original performance. The student uses his or her experience to create a new, original piece for the final show of music and literature: the poetry concert.
Assessment
The student helps to design and apply criteria for the recitations of poetry. The recitation will show the student's interpretation of the piece and an understanding of vocabulary and meaning. The student will complete a self-evaluation based on the rubric.
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