Introduction
I am a special education teacher at East Rock Global Magnet School. I currently co – teach in the 8th grade. As a magnet school we have students bussed from all over the city and in a variety of programs across grade levels. These programs include special education, hearing impaired and a New Arrival Center for students who enter the New Haven Public School system from other countries with little to no knowledge of the English language. This vastly diverse population varies in economic standing, national origin, ethnicity, and religious beliefs, as well as academic achievement and ability. This population is represented in each classroom. With this in mind, the teachers at East Rock have to discover creative ways to teach and reach a variety of students at various levels at the same time.
This unit is being developed to expose my students to new ways of communicating and expressing themselves, as well as understanding how to interpret what others are expressing through their poetry. In this cross curricular unit I plan to introduce reading and writing poetry to my students in English class. I will then continue to use poetry to teach different time periods of Black History as the subject matter or time of authorship relates to that period. We will concentrate on the Middle Passage, Slavery and the Underground Railroad, Emancipation, Harlem Renaissance, Jim Crow and Civil Rights to present day. I will have the students interpret the meaning of the poetry as well as create their own poetry in their response to the literature, which is a skill needed for the 8th grade Connecticut Master Test (CMT) and the Connecticut Academic Performance Test (CAPT) in 10th grade.
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