About This Lesson
The focus of this lesson is to only be introduced to a poem written by a former enslaved person. Here the students will identify the author’s tone and mood and use textual evidence to analyze what the text states as well as inferences drawn from the text. In addition, the students will hear the poem read in two ways, read it on their own, and decipher its meaning. This poetry lesson is designed to just get them familiar with reading poetry, using their frame of reference from the book Elijah of Buxton, and to get a feel of the poem written from a former slave’s point of view.
Author photo: Christopher Paul Curtis By Jeffrey Beall (Own work) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
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