These lessons are the final lessons in our week on the Harlem Renaissance movement. The first day we spent a large chunk of the class putting together a list of themes the students saw in the different poems, songs, and primary sources we read throughout the week. Once we established the themes, including prejudice, racism, progress, freedom, self-expression, and violence, students were given a portion of the class to begin writing their own Spoken Word pieces about one of the themes of the Harlem Renaissance and how that theme is important in their own lives. The second lesson has many moving parts but the goal was to scaffold students to present their Spoken Word pieces to the whole class. Students were given time to finish working on their pieces, practice with one other group, and then present to the whole class.
Lesson 1: Themes of Harlem Renaissance |
Lesson 2: Student Spoken Word Presentations |
Essential Question: This section gets an 5/10 because the essential question was very historically based. The essential question for the week was, “What were the social and political implications of the Harlem Renaissance?” The one saving grace of this essential question is that there are modern day implications of the Harlem Renaissance and this question gets at those. In the scope of the unit, we covered artists of the Harlem Renaissance, the implications of this movement, and the modern day ramifications. It is a topic that is extremely relatable for many students because so many of them feel marginalized by society and the work of Hughes and McKay resonate with them.
Historical Lesson: These lessons get the highest grade for a historical lesson out of all of the units I looked at in my inquiry and that is because the CHQ, “What are the themes of the Harlem Renaissance?” This CHQ gets such a high rating because there is a CHQ and because students are asked to think critically and deeply as they developed a list of themes from the Harlem Renaissance.
Modern Connection: The second lesson in this set has the modern aspects of the unit covered as it asks students to connect what they have learned with their own lives. Students can look at the lives and works of the Harlem Renaissance artists and learn how they overcame difficulties. Then in turn, students can use those themes and lessons in their own lives. As historian Peter Stearns writes,
History also provides a terrain for moral contemplation. Studying the stories of individuals and situations in the
past allows a student of history to test his or her own moral sense, to hone it against some of the real
complexities individuals have faced in difficult settings. People who have weathered adversity not just in some
work of fiction, but in real, historical circumstances can provide inspiration (1998).
Historical Lesson: These lessons get the highest grade for a historical lesson out of all of the units I looked at in my inquiry and that is because the CHQ, “What are the themes of the Harlem Renaissance?” This CHQ gets such a high rating because there is a CHQ and because students are asked to think critically and deeply as they developed a list of themes from the Harlem Renaissance.
Modern Connection: The second lesson in this set has the modern aspects of the unit covered as it asks students to connect what they have learned with their own lives. Students can look at the lives and works of the Harlem Renaissance artists and learn how they overcame difficulties. Then in turn, students can use those themes and lessons in their own lives. As historian Peter Stearns writes,
History also provides a terrain for moral contemplation. Studying the stories of individuals and situations in the
past allows a student of history to test his or her own moral sense, to hone it against some of the real
complexities individuals have faced in difficult settings. People who have weathered adversity not just in some
work of fiction, but in real, historical circumstances can provide inspiration (1998).