CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.7.5Analyze the structure an author uses to organize a text, including how the major sections contribute to the whole and to the development of the ideas. Students are asked to reflect on Lawrence’s use of art and text to create narratives.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.7.10By the end of the year, read and comprehend literary nonfiction in the grades 6-8 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range. The students are asked to read the Nib piece (graphic interpretation) on the Haitian revolution as well as readings of and about Lawrence’s narratives.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W7.2Write informative/explanatory texts, including the narration of historical events, scientific procedures/ experiments, or technical processes. The students retell the stories of their chosen subjects through art and narration.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.7.3Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, relevant descriptive details, and well-structured event sequences. The creative nature of the final project allows students to retell experiences of others in a well-structured series of panels and narrative text.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.7.10Write routinely over extended time frames (time for research, reflection, and revision) and shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of discipline-specific tasks, purposes, and audiences. Students are asked to utilize journals for entries related to the discussions as well as leading up to and conducting interviews with chosen subjects.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.7.1Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 7 topics, texts, and issues, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly. Throughout the unit, students are asked to share and engage each other in their ideas.
1 Nesbett, Peter. Jacob Lawrence: The Complete Prints, 1963-2000: a Catalog Raisonné (Seattle: Francine Seders Gallery, 2005), 16.
2 See the work of Brandon Byrd (The Black Republic), Ashli White (Encountering Revolution), Leslie Alexander (Fear of A Black Republic), Alfred Hunt (Slumbering Volcano), Sara Fanning, Maurice Jackson, and others. See especially Matthew Clavin, Toussaint Louverture and the American Civil War.
3 Sudhir Hazareesingh, Black Spartacus (Farrar, Straus and Giroux: New York, 2020), 351.
4 Laurent Dubois and John Garrigus, Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804 (Boston; Bedford/St.Martin’s Press, 2006), 13.
5 Hazareesingh 48.
6 Hazareesingh 325.
7 Hazareesingh 345.
8 Dubois and Garrigus 8.
9 Hazareesingh 351.