Erica Walker is a passionate secondary ELA teacher and well-versed in American Literature. When I was looking for someone to review and write about my Harlem Renaissance unit, she jumped at the chance. I encouraged her to look through all of the Harlem Renaissance activities in this Harlem Renaissance unit and choose 5 of her favorites to share with my readers. Here are her top 5 activities for teaching The Harlem Renaissance.
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HARLEM RENAISSANCE LESSON PLAN IDEAS
Over my years of teaching the Harlem Renaissance in both AP and mainstream ELA, I’ve realized that I am genuinely fascinated by this rich and wondrous time in American history. It was teaching a unit on The Great Gatsby that first piqued my interests and led me down a rabbit hole that has resulted in a complete revamping of my units. As a result, the Harlem Renaissance has made its way from simply historical context in a novel study to its rightful place as an entire unit of focus within my courses. And while the period is rich, vibrant, and bursting with creativity in its very essence, I’m always looking for new ways to help my students explore this content. Enter Ashley’s The Harlem Renaissance Unit Plan. This unit plan is full of creative and engaging activities for teaching the Harlem Renaissance and exposing students to a variety of artists and their contributions to this Black cultural mecca in early 1900s America.
5 of my favorite activities for teaching The Harlem Renaissance:
Introduction to the harlem renaissance
Arguably, the most important element of beginning a new unit is setting up your students with the cultural, political, and social contexts for the works and artists they will be exploring. There are many ways that you could introduce your students to the history of the Harlem Renaissance, but I dare say none are as creative as using Word Art. What makes this particular activity so valuable is its ability to provide students with access to resources that expose them to this time while also allowing them to flex their creative and artistic muscles to promote learning and retention.
The Harlem Renaissance introduction activity in this unit plan offers the option to watch or read the content, appealing to students’ unique needs for learning while also giving you the flexibility to make the activity work under a variety of conditions. After accessing the content, students create a piece of art that reflects what they’ve learned, and they support their artistic choices using evidence from the text(s). Students are given a chance to practice and refine their skills in defending their choices and are set up with a foundation of understanding of some of America’s most remarkable artists and the factors that brought them all together.
Bonus: it serves as a formative assessment by allowing you to gauge what your students have taken from the text(s), as well as a chance to decorate your classroom for the unit!
HARLEM RENAISSANCE HOW IT STARTED… HOW IT’S GOING
The name of this activity got me really excited, and it didn’t disappoint! In this task, students take a side-by-side look at how the influences of Black artists in the past are seen in our modern era. This Harlem Renaissance activity is a great opportunity for examining and celebrating Black joy – a recurrent theme in both the unit and approach to teaching and learning about the Black experience in America. This task directly looks at the experiences of artists and creative types during the Harlem Renaissance and gets students to make connections in a formula that (likely) feels familiar to them. While completing this activity, students will be able to recognize how their lives, social media trends, and modern art are all connected to the pursuits and triumphs of the greats of the Harlem Renaissance.
gEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS HARLEM RENAISSANCE ACTIVITY
Based on the theory explored by Eric Weiner in his book, The Geography of Genius, this activity provides students with an opportunity to understand and appreciate the role of community in creating a movement. A well-rounded study of the Harlem Renaissance should focus on the talents and contributions of a variety of artists, and this task sets up students to recognize that these masters of their crafts were not operating in isolation and that it was a direct result of their community that they were able to pursue their gifts and leave an everlasting imprint on cultural development in America and beyond.
Students are asked to take what they’ve learned from their reading on various Black artists of the time and explore the connection between what Weiner lays out as the required elements for creating genius communities. After making connections between the Harlem Renaissance and Weiner’s ideas, students are given a chance to make personal connections to these concepts. This last portion of the activity really sees students letting their creative juices flow as they do some research on genius communities that they may thrive in for their post-secondary studies. Like most of us, I’m always looking for ways to make what I’m teaching feel relevant to my students’ lives and while a study of the Harlem renaissance may seem an unlikely place but it’s…genius!
PEOPLE, POETRY, AND PROSE OF THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE
Okay, so one of my hang-ups with teaching a poetry unit in the past has been asking kids to essentially repeat and practice the same skill over and over ad nauseam; read the poem, annotate the poem, complete the analysis sheet, etc. But what Ashley has provided in her People, Poetry, and Prose activity allows students to make specific connections and demonstrate their analysis skills in quick but thought-provoking ways. The activities range from collage creation to art interpretation—even Shakespeare makes an appearance—and are creative and diverse enough that students won’t feel like they are repeating the same task over and over. The texts within the activity are also varied and expose students to many styles and voices while still focusing on the works and contributions of some of the Harlem Renaissance’s greats. This Harlem Renaissance unit plan contains 20 selections from:
♦ Langston Hughes
♦ Georgia Douglas Johnson
♦ Claude McKay
♦ Zora Neale Hurston
♦ Countee Cullen
♦ Helene Johnson
♦ Jean Toomer
♦ Gwendolyn Bennett
♦ Alain Locke
♦ Effie Lee Newsome
HARLEM RENAISSANCE EXTENSION ACTIVITY
While candles and teaching the Harlem Renaissance seem an unlikely pairing, it is precisely what makes this activity such a creative option and a real think-piece for students. I love getting my students to think outside the box, and this is the perfect activity to engage them in making connections between two seemingly unrelated things. This extension activity idea also touches on media strands by getting students to think about the marketability of their scent creations. Click here to browse the “mentor text” candle company that inspired this Harlem Renaissance activity. Having students share their brainstorms and justify some of their choices would make for great classroom conversation and an excellent way for me to identify how my students are retaining what they’ve learned about these figures and their works.
I hope these creative Harlem Renaissance activities inspire you to take your Harlem Renaissance unit to the next level or at least encourage you to carve out more time in your year for it because it’s definitely worth it! If you love these ideas as much as I do, check out Ashley’s Harlem Renaissance Unit Plan for all of these activities and more!
