Appendix
Standards -- Oklahoma Academic Standards for English Language Arts -- 11th grade. These standards can be easily cross-referenced to other standards.
11.1.S.1 Students will work effectively and respectfully in diverse groups by showing willingness to make necessary compromises to accomplish a goal, sharing responsibility for collaborative work, and recognizing individual contributions. Within their small groups for both our class dramatic reading of “I’m Explaining a Few Things” and their chosen poem of witness, they will have to work together to create a powerful performance.
11.1.S.2 Students will follow agreed-upon rules as they engage in collaborative discussions about what they are reading and writing, expressing their own ideas clearly, building on the ideas of others, and respectfully disagreeing when necessary in pairs, diverse groups, and whole-class settings. While in small groups, students will discuss the dramatic reading of their section of I’m Explaining a Few Things ” and their chosen poem. They will also use the dramatic reading script notation protocol to successfully navigate a small group setting.
11.1.S.3 Students will conduct formal and informal presentations in a variety of contexts supporting their message with evidence and using verbal and nonverbal cues. Students are doing a whole class presentation with “I’m Explaining a Few Things” and a group presentation with their chosen poem of witness performance.
11.3.R.1 Students will analyze the extent to which historical, cultural, and/or global perspectives affect authors’ stylistic choices in grade-level literary and informational texts. For every poem we read in class and with the poem they choose for their project, students will have to research and analyze the historical context as that helps determine the author's purpose.
11.3.R.4 Students will evaluate how literary devices impact theme, mood, and/or tone, using textual evidence. Students will use annotations and class discussion in order to analyze the literary devices within “Strange Fruit” and “I’m Explaining a Few Things”
11.4.R.2 Students will use context clues, connotation, and denotation to determine or clarify the meaning of words or distinguish among multiple-meaning words. When students read “Strange Fruit” and “I’m Explaining a Few Things,” they will be using context clues, connotation and denotation to examine how words contribute to a poem’s overall meaning.
11.7.R Students will analyze and evaluate the techniques used in a variety of multimodal content and how they contribute to meaning. This will be met during our introductory activity where students will compare the poem of “Strange Fruit” with Billie Holiday’s performance, focusing on the question of how her performance enhances the poem’s meaning.
11.7.W Students will create engaging multimodal content that intentionally enhances understanding of findings, reasoning, and evidence for diverse audiences. The culmination activity will meet this standard as they are creating dramatic performances of poetry of witness.
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