Objectives
Students will begin to study the rhetorical devices used in most African-American poetic sermons to choose parts as a base for exploration of trumpeting noise in an audience - call and response or simply silence. For this study, students will delve into all aspects of poetry while focusing our attention on African-American and Caribbean poets. To hear the sound of words, students will use audio and video technology to listen to works as they demonstrate techniques for the speaking voice and all that surrounds that voice. In our school of diverse voices and dialects, students will investigate voice and language beyond the words from sound to expression to meaning and feeling.
Group poetry writing will also be explored in this unit. We will create a symphony of lexical sound to be used like an orchestral performance - all presented with words only. Historical context will accompany the writings of the African-American poet to bring a piece of the reality of the times to student learners. Students are required as participants in the unit to bring words to life, to make the printed page resound from the classroom walls; they will use audio tapings/recordings, and also bring sound to the stage and public event. This unit will include the viewing of several performance poetry videos (e.g. Amiri Baraka, Furious Flower) and look at the process of sampling expressions for layering of tone, rhythm, timing, and meaning. Using this type of technique will allow students to consider analyzing poetry as literature that is layered with symbolic inferences. For purpose of this unit, no consideration will be given to using instrumental accompaniment. Students will be acknowledged if they choose to embark on their poetic works in a musical direction.
Another goal of the unit is for students to employ poetry writing and performance poetry to express their critique of the world. They will use the elements of the poem to shape their language and discourse, question their world, construct and/or reconstruct their identities in an effort to develop their own voice.
Comments: