Poetry through Jazz, Rap, and Hip Hop

Designed as a teacher resource, a packet identifies resources and approaches instructors can use to incorporate jazz into their history classes. Materials are identified by historical era, from the roots of jazz prior to World War I to...

Discover lyric poetry through a reading of Sympathy by Paul Laurence Dunbar and analyze its meaning with three short-answer questions covering symbolism, personification, alliteration, metaphors, and similes. 

Really? Rapping The Odyssey? Really. A discussion of the oral tradition of story telling and its links to Epic poetry sets the stage for a series of activities that encourage improvisation to integrate music into other classrooms....

The Bard, Nikki Giovanni, Mos Def? “Sonnet 18,” Ego Tripping,” and “Black on Both Sides”? Sure! It’s the poetics. Class members compare the lyrics, rhythm, and rhyme in classic poetry to hip-hop in a richly detailed resource that...

What is poetry? Does hip-hop qualify as poetry? Do Shakespeare's monologues qualify as poetry? Class members grapple with these questions as they examine the poetic elements and themes presented in different texts. Groups of four study...

Lines from Shakespeare and from hip-hop artists provide learners with an opportunity to examine the literary devices these artists use to express their ideas about love. Groups use the provided lines to craft found poems, and then the...

Students discuss the societal roots of music from times of slavery and black spirituals, and compare it to the emergence of Rap and Hip Hop music.

Students write a rap or hip-hop lyric about the life of a famous Black American. They explore famous Black Americans in history and explore how the rap form compares to other forms of poetic expression.

Students examine hip-hop music. In this hip-hop lesson, students compare traditional aboriginal music with current hip-hop music. Students construct a recipe for writing a hip-hop song and identify literary elements in music.

Spice up your traditional approach to teaching poetic structure with a wonderful animated video, which not only covers such terms as foot, meter, verse, but also stresses Shakespeare's unique use of iambic pentameter to convey emotion...