Unit Overview
The unit begins by examining the learning targets and essential questions. This allows students to understand the goals and discuss the uses and benefits of diving deeper into the text. Through this examination, the teacher can correct misunderstandings about texts being read, marked, and understood to achieve a particular grade in the class.
The understanding of marking the text, for the students, shifts to a focus on diving deeper, being inquisitive and linking the historical past to the present.
Essential Questions
- How does an author’s craft, structure, and syntax, help to convey an overall theme?
- How does the historical context of a work of literature help us understand the deeper meaning?
- How has the lived experience of Black Americans changed over time?
The unit will begin by reteaching a close reading analysis with Langston Hughes’ poetry. By focusing on some of his shorter pieces, rich with figurative language, students will work collaboratively to use the close reading marks in ways that build their connections and connotations to the specific words in the poems and to build curiosity into the historical context.
As a class we will read, and reread, Hughes’ The Negro Speaks of Rivers. Students will work collaboratively to identify figurative language and annotate beyond simply marking the text. Since this will be their first attempt, much of this will be done in groups with constant opportunities to share and expand our annotations.
Next, students will read the text again with a focus on curiosity. The goal being to identify words and phrases we are curious about, and areas where we think we can learn more. Students will share their questions and we will begin the research process.
After the research portion, students will discuss their new understandings of the text. Why did Langston decide to include these particular landmarks?
Finally, we’ll read chapter 51, I’ve Known Rivers, of Langston’s autobiography where Hughes describes his creation of this poem. Having this information, students are now ready to write their final analysis of Hughes’ poem, synthesizing their original close-reading interpretations, historical research, and Hughes’ thoughts.
Lastly, we’ll discuss their final observations, connections to today’s world, other texts, or our own lives, and identify how our understanding of the poem changed with each layer of analysis. This final debrief is important as it helps us understand the benefit of each type of analysis and begins to answer our essential questions.
Additional poems examined by students, similarly, will include Mother to Son, and Montage of a Dream Deferred.
After whole group and small group practice with poetry, students will work in literature circles to independently read and analyze one of Hughes’ short stories, from his collection, The Ways of White Folks. They will read, Home, Passing, Berry, Poor Little Black Fellow, One Christmas Eve, and Mother and Child.
In each group, students will read and annotate their stories focusing on close reading analysis. They will hold fishbowl discussions about their findings.
Next, students will reread their text for historical context. They will work together to draft research questions and then find the answers to those. In their fishbowl discussions, they will draw connections between the historical information and how it impacts their overall understanding of stories’ themes.
In a final group discussion, students will draw connections between the themes and discoveries found across the different short stories. They will discuss the ways some of those themes are found in our modern times, leading to their ultimate written analysis of Langston Hughes’ themes and their ability to connect the lives of Black Americans than to now.
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