TITLE: Developing Poetry Based on Cemetery Headstones

ENGLISH: Poetry

GRADE: 11th Grade

TEKS:

Chapter 110 1 A, B 8 D 9 A, B 11 D, E 19 A, B

OBJECTIVE:

The student will explore the verisimilitude of art to reality, sharing ideas about discrimination in class discussion. The student will infer the thoughts of various individuals whose headstones might be portrayed in the photograph and depict these reflections in an appropriate epitaph.

MATERIALS:

• See images below

DISCUSSION:

1. What details in the photographs place the time period? What photographic techniques have been used or are relevant to the pictures?
2. What do the details in the pictures tell us about the lives of African Americans at this time period?
3. What does the cemetery suggest to you? What conclusions can you draw about the lives of minorities in this era? What types of experiences do you imagine they have had? Are things any different today? Why or how?

VOCABULARY TERMS:

realism, epitaph, persona

PROCEDURE:

• Have students examine the pictures and discuss the idea of discrimination and its importance in the 20th century. What do the photographs suggest to them? They might tie this discussion to Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird or to American history.
• Students should identify the human condition and personal strength in these pictures as well as the social aspect of discrimination. They should be able to focus on the lives of the individuals beyond the photographs. Ask them to infer what circumstances might have resulted in the settings or events depicted. Ask them to try to get "into" the characters and imagine how one of them might have felt.
• Read students several examples of epitaphs from Edgar Lee Master's Spoon River Anthology. Have students adopt the persona of an individual in one of the graves depicted in the black cemetery. They are to write an epitaph appropriate to that individual which will illustrate how that person might have been treated in life and death. They should think about how some succeed against great odds, some fail in spite of things. They might incorporate the epitaph onto a headstone or simply write the epitaph.

EVALUATION:

Rubric which addresses the areas of language or detail as well as evidence of appropriate inference based on the picture.

RESOURCES:

Publications:
Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River Anthology