Voices of Urban Youth
Voices of Urban Youth
Objectives
Students will read several poems and passages by urban youth and discuss their meaning, form, and cultural perspectives. Students will: [IS.27 - Language Function]
- evaluate the characteristics of poems and narratives to determine how the form relates to purpose.
- interpret and analyze the use of literary devices within and among texts.
- evaluate the effectiveness of the author’s use of literary devices in various genres.
- evaluate the context of literal, figurative, and idiomatic vocabulary to clarify meaning.
- summarize, draw conclusions, and make generalizations using a variety of mediums.
- identify and evaluate the structure, essential content, and author’s purpose between and among texts.
- develop new and unique insights based on extended understanding derived from critical examination of texts.
- analyze the societal and cultural influences in texts. [IS.28 - Level 1]
Essential Questions
- How does interaction with text create thinking and response?
Vocabulary
[IS.1 - Preparation ]
[IS.2 - ELP Standards]
[IS.3 - ELL Students]
- Characterization: The method an author uses to reveal characters and their various personalities. [IS.4 - All Students]
- Flashback: A device used in literature to present action that occurred before the beginning of the story. Flashbacks are often introduced as the dreams or recollections of one or more characters. [IS.5 - All Students]
- Foreshadowing: A device used in literature to create expectation or to set up an explanation of later developments. [IS.6 - All Students]
- Generalization: A conclusion, drawn from specific information, that is used to make a broad statement about a topic or person. [IS.7 - All Students]
- Hyperbole: An exaggeration or overstatement (e.g., I was so embarrassed I could have died.). [IS.8 - All Students]
- Imagery: A word or group of words in a literary work which appeal to one or more of the senses: sight, taste, touch, hearing, and smell; figurative language. The use of images serves to intensify the impact of the work. [IS.9 - All Students]
- Inference: A judgment based on reasoning rather than on direct or explicit statement. A conclusion based on facts or circumstances; understandings gained by “reading between the lines.” [IS.10 - All Students]
- Irony: The use of a word or phrase to mean the exact opposite of its literal or usual meaning; incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the expected result. [IS.11 - All Students]
- Literary Elements: The essential techniques used in literature (e.g., characterization, setting, plot, theme). [IS.12 - All Students]
- Metaphor: A figure of speech that expresses an idea through the image of another object. Metaphors suggest the essence of the first object by identifying it with certain qualities of the second object. An example is “But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun” in William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Here, Juliet, the first object, is identified with qualities of the second object, the sun. [IS.13 - All Students]
- Mood: The prevailing emotions of a work or of the author in his or her creation of the work. The mood of a work is not always what might be expected based on its subject matter. [IS.14 - All Students]
- Narrative: Text which conveys a story or which relates events or dialogue; contrast with expository text. [IS.15 - All Students]
- Personification: An object or abstract idea given human qualities or human form (e.g., Flowers danced about the lawn.). [IS.16 - All Students]
- Plot: The structure of a story. [IS.17 - All Students and Struggling Learners] The sequence in which the author arranges events in a story. The structure often includes the rising action, the climax, the falling action, and the resolution. [IS.18 - Struggling Learners] The plot may have a protagonist who is opposed by an antagonist, [IS.19 - All Students] creating what is called conflict. [IS.20 - All Students]
- Poetry: In its broadest sense, writing that aims to present ideas and evoke an emotional experience in the reader through the use of meter, imagery, connotative, and concrete words. [IS.21 - All Students] Some poetry has a carefully constructed structure based on rhythmic patterns. Poetry typically relies on words and expressions that have several layers of meaning (figurative language). It may also make use of the effects of regular rhythm on the ear and may make a strong appeal to the senses through the use of imagery.
- Point of View: The way in which an author reveals characters, events, and ideas in telling a story; the vantage point from which the story is told. [IS.22 - All Students]
- Setting: The time and place in which a story unfolds.
- Simile: A comparison of two unlike things in which a word of comparison (like or as) is used (e.g., She eats like a bird.). [IS.23 - All Students]
- Symbolism: A device in literature where an object represents an idea. [IS.24 - All Students]
- Theme: A topic of discussion or writing; a major idea broad enough to cover the entire scope of a literary work. [IS.25 - All Students]
- Tone: The attitude of the author toward the audience and characters (e.g., serious or humorous). [IS.26 - All Students]
Duration
2–3 hours/2–3 class periods
Prerequisite Skills
Materials
Note: Each of the poems in this lesson was composed by or about a young person living in the city, and each one reveals the impact of environment on the speaker in the poem. Other poems and passages may be substituted for the suggested resources listed below. [IS.29 - ELL Students] It is helpful if a biography of the writer is available so that students can read it after analyzing the reading. The poems used should also offer students the opportunity to examine a variety of forms and writing styles so that they can see how a poet’s perspective shapes the work.
- “We Real Cool” from Selected Poems by Gwendolyn Brooks Blakely. Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1963. Available at http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15433
- “Becoming Visible: Gwendolyn Brooks” in American Passages: A Literary Survey. Annenberg Media, 1997. Available at http://www.learner.org/amerpass/unit14/authors-3.html
- “On ‘We Real Cool.’” An Interview with Brooks by George Stravos. Modern American Poetry. (Site contains additional commentary.) Available at http://www.english.illinois.edu/MAPS/poets/a_f/brooks/werealcool.htm
- “Saturday at the Canal” by Gary Soto. Available at http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/saturday-at-the-canal/
- “Gary Soto” (brief biography). Available at http://www.garysoto.com/bio.html
- “View of the Library of Congress from Paul Laurence Dunbar High School” by Thomas Sayers Ellis in The Garden Thrives: Twentieth Century African-American Poetry, ed. by Clarence Major. HarperPerennial, 1993.
- “Thomas Sayers Ellis” (brief biography). Available at http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=80749
- “Dream Deferred” by Langston Hughes. Available at http://www.cswnet.com/~menamc/langston.htm
- “Langston Hughes” (brief biography). Available at http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/83
- “O Daedalus, Fly Away Home” by Robert Hayden. Available at http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/o-daedalus-fly-away-home/
- Biography of Robert Hayden. PoemHunter.com. Available at http://www.poemhunter.com/robert-hayden/biography/
- a response journal for each student
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