LaShante A. James
Essay Assignment: A cultural analysis is required for the 10
th
grade curriculum. As a variation of this assignment, students would analyze their own personal culture, and how it was shaped by their home/family, school and neighborhood. With the implementation of the Common Core Standards, the terminology would change to a narrative. Students will develop real experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences.
In order to bridge the connections between text and self, a central question or essential question would be helpful. How am I a product of my environment- home/family, school, and neighborhood? This question allows students to draw upon personal experiences, while referring back to the texts and citing comparisons with characters from the texts. The comparisons should include what aspects of the city experience during that time period relate their own experience. Through characters in the literary texts, students will have the opportunity to reflect on their own experiences in Urban America and to form connections with significant events in history. For example, Moody's
Coming of Age in Mississippi
is a text written from first person perspective. The author reflects on her family dynamics, the impact of racial segregation in the South and explains how she overcame the challenges of being black through education. This text would allow students to form connections with family relations, the challenges of growing up with financial challenges and how they view education in their lives.
Poetry: Although poetry appears to be a more freer form of writing, with fewer rules, my students have reservations about whether they can achieve the beauty of poetry. I would like to challenge them to write about their feelings and thoughts through poetry.
For struggling readers, I would differentiate by having them compose a paragraph about an emotion or moment. This emotion or personal memory should be connected with their urban experience, possibly stemming from a journal entry. Students should expand on this idea by reflecting on the experience of a specific time period that was covered in class. Once the paragraph is written, the students would change the prose into poetry by breaking converting the paragraph into lines, resembling a poem. This poem should progress chronology, first documenting an immigrants' view of urban America, and then their own.