Teaching the Harlem Renaissance

Harlem Renaissance

How does literature contribute to history, and what does the Harlem Renaissance reveal about U.S. History?

Modern U.S. History

Content Learning Objective (content and product):

e.g., students will be able to [content analysis] by [product and activity].

What historical content will students know at the end of the lesson?

At the end of the lesson students will know the literary significance of the Harlem Renaissance within a historical context. Specifically, they will understand how the literary aspirations realized through the Harlem Renaissance contributed to United States history in terms of literature and the fine arts.

State using Formal Objective format.

Historical Thinking Learning Objective (thinking skill and product):

e.g., students will be able to weigh [historical thinking learning objective] by [activity].

Describe what students will know and be able to do at the end of the lesson related to your chosen historical thinking skill.

The students will be able to name some of the more notable authors of the Harlem Renaissance -- specifically Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Helene Johnson. Moreover, the students will identify works of literature which these authors composed and denote how their literary style affected both the Harlem Renaissance and literature in the U.S.

Historical Thinking Skill, California Content, and Common Core Standards Addressed:

List the historical thinking skill(s) addressed.

List the old California Content Standard addressed (10.4.

List the Common Core Standards Addressed

Narrative Summary of Tasks / Actions:

Summarize the step-by-step parts of the lesson with time estimates for each part.

Example:

1. Warmup (5 min) Students will begin by free writing about notable authors and poets with which they are familiar.

2. Mini Lecture (10 min) The mini-lecture will include a verbal overview of the three most noteworthy authors of the Harlem Renaissance: Hurston, Hughes, and Johnson.

3. Group Inquiry Activity (30 min) Students will research information about each of the three authors and compose a presentation about their respective authors.

4. Group Presentation (10 min) Students will issue their presentations to the class.

Materials / Equipment:

List everything you will need to teach this lesson:

Helene Johnson's This Waiting For Love

The Poetry of the Negro edited by Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps

Wi-Fi access

Tablet devices such as iPads

Inquiry-Based Lesson Plan for History-Social Science

1. Anticipatory Set

Time:

Describe the warm-up activity students will complete at the start of class:

Students will begin by free writing about notable authors and poets with which they are familiar. Then they will write about the importance of such people, and how both, fiction, and literature is a mechanism to depict history.

2. Central Historical Question for Lesson

Time:

Student-friendly question that captures what students will know at end of lesson.

Should be engaging.

Which author of the Harlem Renaissance which we studied today has had the greatest impact on your understanding of what that movement was, and why so? The objective is for the students to use one of the three authors they learned about as a use case for underscoring the historical importance of this literary movement.

3. Teacher Input (delivery of historical context)

Time:

The general focus of this lecture is that the students must understand that literature is a viable medium for both recording and transmitting history. The pedagogue will emphasize that poems and fiction function as time capsules which encapsulate the cultural mores of the time, and its accordant zeitgeist. The teacher will then explain how Hughes, Hurston and Johnson each created individual (and in certain cases even collective) works of literature that were indicative of salient cultural issues during the time. The instructor will provide brief examples of works of literature of these authors that accomplished this goal, then exhort students to identify other such works (by these authors) which achieved the same purpose.

Describe the input students will receive in order to complete the lesson.

Students will be read passages from The Poetry of the Negro and This Waiting For Love which exemplify cultural themes that were part of U.S. History. Many of these themes will relate to the African-American experience.

Possibilities Include: Lecture Notes, Video, Documents (primary and/or secondary)

4. Student Activity and Investigation (w/ differentiation)

Time:

Describe what students will be doing as an activity or INQUIRY.

Students will be divided into three groups and arbitrarily assigned one of the three authors to research. They will then look at online sources to ascertain literary works which identify major themes of the Harlem Renaissance and the cultural experience of African-Americans.

5. Lesson Assessment (w/ differentiation)

Time:

Explain what students will do or produce to demonstrate they "GOT IT."

Students will issue group presentations about the particular individuals they researched, and their works of literature. They will explain to the class how these works exemplify themes of the Harlem Renaissance and of the experience of African-Americans early in the 20th century.

This could be something they turn-in for points, something they will perform, or any measurable output they will produce.

6. Closure

Time:

How will you bring the whole class together in the last 5-10 minutes to see if they got it and provide feedback on their performance before they leave the class?

Students will provide feedback on one another's presentations, and then have to compose an answer to the student-friendly question while corroborating their responses with information gleaned from the aforementioned presentations.

7. Student Reflection (metacognition)

Time:

How will you get students to think about what they learned during this lesson?

Students will think about what they've learned by listening to each other's presentations and answering the student-friendly question at the end of the lesson.