Final Grade: 61/70
This set of artifacts was part of a larger unit with many different sub-units but this particular sub-unit worked well. I loved the chance to explore Harlem Renaissance poetry and music with my students, and even more than that I loved giving my students the chance to make their own pieces of poetry.
Similarly to the Oppression/Advocacy Unit, students were extremely responsive to the creative assignment. What differs from the Oppression/Advocacy Unit is that this unit asked students to apply the history to their lives whereas the Oppression/Advocacy assignment asked students to developed a creative representation of the things they learned. |
That being said, I would change part of the Spoken Word assignment. I think it was too easy for students to produce good work even if they paid no attention to the historical work we had been doing that week. There was no accountability for seeing the historical thinking in students' Spoken Word pieces.
Additionally, I think I did not give enough time to the themes of the Harlem Renaissance that can be seen working themselves out in modern day. One of the questions I asked students was, "If Langston Hughes were to come to 2016, would he say that we have reached our goals?" There is so much to mine in this question and I think students could have benefited from reading an article about race relations today and applying that article and their Spoken Word pieces to answering that question.
To read more about what tools and techniques I want to implement in future practice to fix some of the problems I just addressed, click on the "Implications for Future Practice" tab.