This unit was planned as an intervention series for students struggling in this area of the standards. Our PLC selected these literary texts to teach because they are rich in key ideas and themes. Both stories are authored by Langston Hughes. "Thank You, Ma'am" will be used for the pretest. Then several actives will be used over the next two days to help students go deeper into the rich vocabulary, characterization, and themes of the story, to ultimately improve their understanding of the plot and key ideas. Finally, students will be asked to use some of the same comprehension strategies as they read the story, "Early Autumn." This will culminate in a post-test on the second story.

It is to be used in three lessons, approximately 40 minutes each. A teacher could easily adapt the lesson to be used in a whole group setting, over the course of more days, before administering the final post assessment.

This reader, written specifically for adults, contains eight chapters about Langston Hughes' family history and personal life. It includes excerpts from many of Hughes' poems and is designed to accompany the BC Reads: Adult Literacy Fundamental English - Course Pack 2. This level 2 reader, one of a series of six readers, is roughly equivalent to grades 1.5 to 3 in the K-12 system. Font size and line spacing can be adjusted in the online view, and have been enhanced for the print and PDF versions for easier reading. This reader has been reviewed by subject experts from colleges and universities.

Through a study of Langston Hughes' poetry, students connect his writing to his place in history.

This course covers the body of modern poetry, its characteristic techniques, concerns, and major practitioners. The authors discussed range from Yeats, Eliot, and Pound, to Stevens, Moore, Bishop, and Frost with additional lectures on the poetry of World War One, Imagism, and the Harlem Renaissance. Diverse methods of literary criticism are employed, such as historical, biographical, and gender criticism.

This resource provides lecture notes and writing assignments for the study of poetry. While specific poems are presented here, these notes and assignments can be adapted and applied to practically any thematic group of poems.  The unit contains several modules. The first posits the work of African American poet Langston Hughes as poems that establish a legacy of oratorical poems addressing social issues faced not only by African Americans, but by any and all Americans, especially the historically disenfranchised.  The unit explores poems in Hughes' legacy, focusing on three poems by African American poets Maya Angelou, Elizabeth Alexander, and Amanda Gorman, who composed U.S. presidential inaugural poems. The second module explores nature poetry. Students read and analyze poems that explore, ponder and sometimes celebrate the relationship between human beings and nature. Ultimately, students compose poetry explication essays. The third module explores the book-length prose poem "I Remember" (Joe Brainard), teaching students to locate and make use of peer-reviewed articles.  Additionally, students write their own "I Remember" poems. Included are introductory lecture, discussion , short writing, explication , and several other assignments. Unless otherwise noted, the materials in this unit are licensed under CC BY-NC-SA.

Professor Kate Rushin describes the Harlem Renaissance as a large social and cultural movement fueled by many factors in this video from A Walk Through Harlem.