Digital Lesson Plan

Step-by-step, whiteboard ready

December 12, 2011, Issue
The Life and Work of Langston Hughes

Explore our featured skill using a Scope play, worksheets, and videos.
Great for meeting Common Core State Standards.

Featured skill:
Craft and structure: How does the play’s author use Langston Hughes’s poetry to help tell the story of his life?

Approximate time to complete lesson: three class periods

Summary:

This fantastic lesson plan weaves together video, audio, and our compelling play Langston Hughes: A Biography in Poems. Students will watch a video that introduces the Harlem Renaissance and Langston Hughes before reading a play that depicts the poet’s early life. After class discussion, small-group work, and video viewing, students will write a reflective essay.

Main objectives:
• to become familiar with Langston Hughes’s life and work
• to understand how his poetry reflects his life experiences
• to gather information and ideas from multiple texts and media types
• to participate in class discussion
• to write a reflective essay

Note: This step-by-step lesson plan is an interactive PDF that includes embedded links to everything you will need. To use these embedded links, you need Adobe Acrobat Reader software. Download it free here. If you can’t use the embedded links, click the links below instead.

This digital lesson includes:
• Harlem Renaissance video
• Poets.org list of most popular poets
• digital version of Langston Hughes: A Biography in Poems to project
• audio clip of “The Dream Keeper”
• video clip of “Harlem”
• Scope worksheet “Critical-Thinking Questions”
• Scope worksheet “The Poetry Connection”
• Barack Obama video clip
• Contest entry form (optional)

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