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Negro Renaissance
Lesson Plan
(includes Student Handout, Scoring Rubric, Resources for Diverse Learners Handout,
& Resources for Diverse
Learners Scoric Rubric)
Adobe PDF file:
Negro Renaissance
Lesson Plan
(includes Student Handout, Scoring Rubric, Resources for Diverse Learners Handout,
& Resources for Diverse
Learners Scoring Rubric)
Lesson Summary:
This lesson will offer students a chance to research and understand the Negro Renaissance, its important contributors, and society’s affect upon the Negro Renaissance contributor’s products; culminating in an online biographical presentation of Negro Renaissance contributors.
Key Features of Powerful Teaching and Learning:
(National Council for the Social Studies. “A Vision of Powerful Teaching and Learning in the Social Studies: Building Social Understanding and Civic Efficacy.”
http://www.socialstudies.org/positions/powerful/)
Meaningful: Students will be able to identify key historical figures, describe and understand a significant historical era of the Negro Renaissance and interpret Black Americans' contributions.
Value-Based: Students will understand the state of American society and simulate being a Black contributor during the Negro Renaissance.
Integrated: Students will gain a greater understanding of the fine arts and utilize writing and technology skills to complete the unit assessment.
Challenging: Skills students will use during the completion of this assignment: researching, note-taking, technology, critical thinking, creativity, and social-emotional skills culminating in a final original product.
Active: Interpreting and creating Negro Renaissance works encourages critical thinking and imaginative skills in students while exposing them to a great variety of fine arts during the 1920 time period.
Purpose/Rationale/Introduction:
This lesson will offer students a chance to research and understand the Negro Renaissance, its important contributors, and society’s affect upon the Negro Renaissance contributor’s products; culminating in an online biographical presentation of Negro Renaissance contributors.
Objectives:
1. Students will be able to define the Negro Renaissance, aka Harlem Renaissance, New Negro Movement, or New Negro Renaissance.
2. Students will be able to describe the significance of the Negro Renaissance in terms of its impact upon American society, Blacks, and its effects on Negro League Baseball.
3. Students will be able to identify key Black historical figures and their contributions during the Negro Renaissance.
4. Students will create an online biographical presentation of a Negro Renaissance contributor.
Materials/Primary Resources:
Black Diamond: The Story of the Negro Baseball Leagues,
by McKissack and McKissack, and The Harlem Renaissance, http://www.calliope.org/ren/.
Procedures and Activities:
Day 1:
Distribute the student handout. Students should read and take notes from copies of Black Diamond, pages 49-54. Explain that Negro Renaissance was also called by other names such as: Harlem Renaissance, New Negro Movement, and/or the New Negro Renaissance. Navigate and display the webpage, The Harlem Renaissance, http://www.calliope.org/ren/, discuss definitions of Harlem Renaissance. Using the website, students research key historical figures of the Renaissance and what their contributions were to the Negro Renaissance.
Days 2 and 3:
Students should choose one key historical contributor to profile for the final assessment. Students will continue researching and taking notes for the final assessment on their chosen contributor, utilizing online and supplemental resources listed below as well as other resources they find independently.
Students will interpret the contributions of their contributor during the Negro Renaissance, their impact upon society, and profile their life.
Conclusion:
Discuss the student handout questions 1-7.
Extension and Enrichment:
Students read Harlem Dancer and Nude Young Dancer.
Discuss similarities and differences. Then students view Barthe’s African Dancer. Discuss similarities and differences.
The student will write a paper comparing and contrasting all three works. Another idea, have students listen to musical works by three different artists of the Negro Renaissance and compare and contrast the three pieces in a written paper.
Online Resources:
Negro Leagues Baseball Museum
http://www.nlbm.com/
A Look at Life in the Negro Leagues
http://coe.ksu.edu/nlbm/
The Negro Renaissance
http://www.rit.edu/~nrcgsh/bx/bx09c.html
MSN Encarta Encyclopedia, Harlem Renaissance
http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761566483/Harlem_
Renaissance.html
Harlem Renaissance
http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1978/2/
78.02.03.x.html
Claude McKay and the New Negro of the 1920’s
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/mckay/
cooper.htm
African American History
http://www.watson.org/~lisa/blackhistory/index.html
African American World: Timeline
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/aaworld/timeline.html
Secondary Resources:
Barthe:
African Dancer
Dubois, W.E.B.:
Dark Princess (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1928)
Huggins, Nathan:
The Harlem Renaissance
Voices From The Harlem Renaissance
Hughes, Langston:
The Best Short Stories by Negro Writers
I, Too
The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
Nude Young Dancer
Thank You M’am
Theme For English B
Who’s Passing For Who
The Big Sea
Fine Clothes To The Jew
Not Without Laughter
Tambourines To Glory
The Ways of White Folks
Weary Blues
Hurston, Zora Neale:
Dust Tracks on a Road
Jonah’s Gourd Vine
Of Mules and Men
Seraph on the Swanee
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Johnson:
The Negro Renaissance and Its Significance
McKay, Claude:
Banana Bottom
Banjo
Harlem Dancer
Harlem: Negro Metropolis
Harlem Shadows
Home To Harlem
A Long Way From Home
Nude Young Dancer
Ottley, Roi and William Weatherby:
The Negro in New York (New York: New York Public Library, 1967)
Assessment
Days 4 and 5:
Students continue researching and answer the student handout questions 8-13. Students complete the final assessment by creating a presentation of their findings using technological methods. The final product is an integrated, comprehensive biographical profile of key Negro Renaissance contributors accessible online. See attached scoring guide.
Alternative Assessment:
Students pretend they are a key historical figure during the Negro Renaissance and create a compilation of poetry, short stories, music, or art. Students write a character profile for themselves including: motivation behind the contribution(s), how they were affected by society as a Negro Renaissance contributor, and how they hope their contribution to the Renaissance will change society.