Last week my work with the Nazareth College/Hillside Work-Scholarship Connection Homework Helper's program has come full circle. I went from a volunteer tutor to being a guest speaker now that my time at Nazareth is finished. Homework Helpers is a program where high school students from the Rochester City School District come on-campus to Nazareth College for a 2 hour educational session. The first hour and fifteen minutes is for tutoring with volunteer tutors consisting of students as well as faculty and staff. The remainder of the time is given to a guest speaker from the Nazareth or Rochester Community.
For my presentation I did a lesson on literary elements that I taught through rap music. I've read my reviews and 89% of the students enjoyed my presentation. Some even wanted me to do another one! This experience shows that there is educational value in rap music if you share that passion with your students.
Here's how I did it. I made a packet with 3 pages that I distributed to the students.
The first page had a list of 10 literary elements and their definitions as well as an example of that element being used in a real rap song. The examples were quoted lines that also cited the artist, song title, and album name. I went over them quickly to start off the lesson.
The second page had 4 excerpts from rap verses by different artists that consisted of 4 lines each. I broke the students into groups and gave them time to identify and locate as many literary elements as possible. Once the time was up, I started with the first verse, rapped it (which really got the students' interest), then asked for volunteers to share what they found. People who volunteered got candy for participating.
The third page had a photocopy of Tupac Shakur's poem "Only 4 the Righteous" from his poetry book, The Rose that Grew From Concrete which contained not only the typed version of his poem, but also an image of the poem that was scanned from his handwritten notebook. This got some of the kids excited. Another poem on this page was Langston Hughes' "I Dream A World." I included this page as backup material in case I went through everything too quickly.
After completing the first two pages of the packet, I gave the students time to write their own raps and poems and gave them the opportunity to share them with the group afterwards. Some students worked in groups, some individually, and others actually pulled their own notebooks out of their backpacks and shared with us poems that they had already written. It was wonderful! Some students were too nervous to read their own work so I gave them the option of having me or a friend of theirs read it for them if they wanted to have it heard.
After the students had time to share, we had a few minutes left so I read "Only 4 the Righteous" which got a few laughs. I didn't have time to do the Hughes poem.
Overall, I had fun giving the lesson and most of the students enjoyed it. I hope that I was able to help make some of the meanings and uses of the literary elements click for some of the students. If nothing else I think the lesson is a great way to start a dialogue about the literary elements. I think in order to be successful with this lesson you need to have a sound knowledge of rap music as well as a passion for it because then you can really connect with students and have meaningful discussions. The best moments for me was during the lesson while I walked around the students to help, I was told a couple times "This is cool, I was just listening to this song on my way here."
