Title of Lesson: Connecting with “Sonny’s Blues”
Content Area: English
Course/Level: 12th Grade English Literature
Lesson Topic: Dealing with suffering
Time: One class period; 50 minutes
Text(s): “Sonny’s Blues”
Materials & Other Resources
Journal paper
Homework questions from the previous day
Objectives
Students will be able to connect a major theme in “Sonny’s Blues” to their own
lives.
Students will be able to work in groups to analyze a text.
Students will be able to answer questions about the text through textual evidence
and discussion.
Tovani Tools:
•
Reading comprehension strategies
•
Questioning what they have read
•
Making real life connections – Text-to-Self Connections
•
Using textual evidence to support points of analysis
Lesson Steps:
•
In the previous class, the teacher and the students read “Sonny’s Blues” as a class
and were given a homework assignment to write down any questions they have
about the text.
•
Class begins – Journal Prompt (written on board)
§
How do you deal with your suffering?
o Teacher explains journal prompt and gives personal example.
o Teacher asks students if they have any questions about journal prompt.
o Teacher tells students they have to write for a full ten minutes without
stopping.
o Hand in journal entries
o (While students are writing their journal the teacher sits at the front of the
class and writes a journal. When the teacher is done writing a journal, she
walks around the classroom.)
o Teacher and class discuss their journal entries. Students raise their hands
in order to speak. (5-10 minutes)
•
Divide the class into groups - four students per group (roughly 20 minutes)
o Have students get out their homework (the questions that came about
while reading the text) and work as a group to answer theses questions.
o Have the students in each group pick a designated role for the next part of
the assignment; speaker, writer, peer-editor, and timekeeper. (Be sure to
write at the top of the paper what role they were assigned.)
§
Go through the text in groups and write down on a separate piece
of paper where certain characters deal with their suffering. Use
textual evidence and quotes.
o Have the groups discuss and write down how they can relate to the text’s
characters, themes, and story.
o (Teacher is walking around while students are in groups, seeing if they
have any questions or need help with anything.)
•
Come back as a class and discuss what each group found.
•
At the end of class, have each student turn in the questions they had about the
text. Have each group turn in the set of group notes on their discussion of the
assigned questions.
Products
Journal entries
Individual homework questions
Group discussion notes
Assessment
Assessing how students connect the short story to their lives.
•
Journal entry
•
Group notes
Assessing how students analyze specific themes, ideas, and characters in a text.
•
Journal entry
•
Group notes
Assessing how students can comprehend textual ideas in reading.
•
Homework questions
Assessing how students use textual evidence to support their claims.
•
Group notes
Rationale
I chose to use “Sonny’s Blues” as the text for my lesson plan because this short
story pertains to issues in students’ lives, such as culture, music, family problems, and
personal experience. I chose to use a journal prompt because it is a good way for students
to make connections between the text and their own lives and get them to begin thinking
about the topic for the class activity. I wanted to assess my students reading
comprehension and their ability to answer their own questions, analyze and connect to a
text, in a group setting. Getting students into groups allows them to work collaboratively
to answer and analyze the texts, answer questions they have, and to simply discuss the
text. Having students come back as a class, after group time, allows students to share
their different ideas and interpretations. Learning from the text and making it relevant to
the lives the students live, will hopefully help the students gain positive decision making
skills and learn healthy ways to deal with their suffering as provided through the self
reflection and class discussion of the prompt. This lesson is good for students because it
is engaging, is relevant to their lives, and requires them to use many different reading
strategies in the learning process.
Possible Interdisciplinary Applications
You can used what is learned in this lesson to help students be more aware of how
to relieve their own suffering through varying means, such as experiencing art,
music, and physical activity in the corresponding classes.
Standards
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RL.11-12.1. Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of
what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text,
including determining where the text leaves matters uncertain.
•
W.11-12.9. Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support
analysis, reflection, and research.