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1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12
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| Overview |
 Over the years, protest songs have served as a means to combat social ills. These songs cover a wide array of topics, including but not limited to the following: racism, sexism, poverty, imperialism, environmental degradation, war, globalization, and homophobia. In 2005, hip-hop artist Kanye West released the single “Diamonds from Sierra Leone” to bring attention to the issue of conflict diamonds. In this lesson, students research and analyze contemporary and historic protest songs and then as a class catalog their findings in a wiki.
This lesson works well with a unit focusing on a piece of literature in which a character(s) actively fights for social, political, or economic justice. For example, this lesson can build on a discussion of the issues that Atticus Finch contends with in To Kill a Mockingbird.
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| From Theory to Practice |
Lynn Langer Meeks and Carol Jewkes Austin illustrate how students are often left in a perpetual state of confusion as a result of their attempts to navigate discourse communities. The authors’ primary concern is when the students’ secondary discourses (the things that are learned formally in a school environment) contradict with their primary discourses (those that are learned within a particular socio-cultural setting). Meeks and Austin provide various techniques for remedying the incongruous student discourses, all of which involve the learning of secondary discourses by way of the students’ primary discourses. For these techniques to work, teachers must be willing to meet students on their “terms” (i.e., conditions and platforms that the students themselves are comfortable with). Obviously, these terms of comfort include nonprint sources and new media. This lesson is the marriage of two of them—songs and wikis.
Meeks and Austin cite group interaction as the catalyst for literacy development. They demonstrate how collaborative projects enable and empower students to learn. This lesson employs the collaborative classroom strategies found in their book, and then extends students’ collaborative efforts to a collaborative digital writing space, the wiki.
The open-editing function of wikis leads not only to collaboration, but also to re-conceptualizations of authorship and readership functions. In the democratic world of wikis, its readers also take on the roles of writer, editor, monitor, and arbitrator. By introducing wiki construction and maintenance, this lesson can lead students to a critical analysis of the new spaces in which they read, write, and think.
Further Reading
Meeks, Lynn Langer and Carol Jewkes Austin. 2003. Literacy in the Secondary English Classroom: Strategies for Teaching the Way Kids Learn. Pearson.
Miller, Nora. 2005. “Wikipedia and the Disappearing ‘Author.’” Etc.: A Review of General Semantics 62.1: 37-40.
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| Student Objectives |
Students will
- work in pairs to critically analyze and examine the lyrics of protest songs.
- identify the social ill/problem the artist is protesting against.
- research information presented in the lyrics.
- build a case for or against the artist’s position.
- add their research to the class wiki.
- learn about the collaborative nature of wikis.
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| Instructional Plan |
Resources
Preparation
Instruction and Activities
Session One
- Begin this lesson by playing the chorus of rapper Kanye West’s “Diamonds from Sierra Leone.” Ideally, students will instantly recognize the track and artist, and even sing along. Before you hand out the materials, ask the class to speculate as to why you played this particular song. Play snippets of other “recognizable” protest songs, including Bob Marley’s “Get Up Stand Up,” Dave Matthews Band’s “Cry Freedom,” Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful,” and Edwin Starr’s “War.”
- Ask the students if they can think of any other protest songs.
- Explain that each student will first search the Internet for a protest song (subject to your approval for content and appropriateness). The song lists under the Web Resources section are a good place to start.
- After students make their decisions, ask them if they are familiar with their song and artist.
- Ask students to share their selections out loud. On the board or chart paper, compile a list of the selected artists and issues these artists are protesting against. Explain that a more detailed compilation will be published on the class wiki.
- Have each student work with a partner to analyze their songs’ content and purpose. Students will use the research guide for this part of the assignment.
- Invite students to share their finding with their fellow classmates.
- Encourage students to find the songs they have selected in their own music collection, their family members’, or online.
Session Two
- Pass out copies of the two articles, “Make Way for Wikis” and “Wiki: Don’t Lose That Number.”
- Allow the students to read the pieces in class.
- Discuss Eric Oatman’s “Make Way for Wikis” first. The article provides a good overview of wikis’ history, characteristics, benefits, and potential problems.
- Ask the students if they have ever created or edited a wiki. Explain the practicality of using wikis in an educational setting (i.e., the simplicity of creating and managing Web sites, the opportunity for project development with Web review, the streamlining of group collaboration, and the ease in which group members’ contributions can be tracked).
- Display the example wiki for the class and explore the way the example works so that students have a visual understanding of what they will be working on. This is also a good time to show and discuss the Wiki Rubric so students know what is expected of them in this project.
- Discuss Jennifer Dorroh’s “Wikis: Don’t Lose That Number.” Remind students (and yourself) that even though wikis are potentially wonderful educational tools, they are not without problems.
- Have the students brainstorm other applications, benefits, and problems of wikis not discussed by either article.
- Have students return to their original groups of two. Explain that the class is going to post their responses to the research guide on the pre-established class wiki. For tracking purposes, you will want the students to establish login IDs. However, make sure that they either use pseudonyms or first names only.
- Help students with the technical aspects of uploading information onto the wiki.
- Encourage them to get creative—graphics, pictures, and hyperlinks are all perfectly acceptable. You may want to have some of your tech-savvy students assist those who need extra guidance.
- Once all the responses are loaded onto the Web site, direct your students’ attention to the wiki on your projected screen. As a class, determine the best way to arrange the entries, whether that’s by artists, issues they’re protesting against, song names, etc.
- Play the protest songs that students bring in. Using the research prompts as a guide, ask the students to jot down responses to the songs they listen to. Encourage them to add their comments to the ones already posted on the class wiki. Furthermore, encourage them to add to and edit their entries in the future.
- Remind the class that the best wikis are the ones that are constantly being taken care of and tinkered with.
- For homework, ask the students to complete the Group Participation Assessment Sheet and the Online Self-reflection Checklist (if a student does not have Internet access at home, this form can be completed later on at school).
Extensions
- Students can write their own protest songs. They would identify issues that they deem worthy of protest and then compose lyrics that bring those issues to light. These too could be added to the class wiki.
- There has been a lot of news lately about blogs and students. Blogs and wikis are cousins in the new media family. They both have similar design elements and collaborative components. However, wikis have escaped the type of scrutiny blogs currently face in school districts across the country. Have the students hypothesize as to why this is the case. Ask them to draw up the similarities and differences between wikis and blogs. This is a great time to introduce the concepts of content, form, arrangement of entries, search mechanisms, authority, and classroom possibilities.
Web Resources
- Protest Songs
http://web.archive.org/web/20080124172717/www.ocap.ca/lyrics.html
- Compiled by the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, this list provides complete lyrics for all the songs that comprise it.
- “Make Way for Wikis”
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6277799.html
- In this article, Eric Oatman, the news and features editor at School Library Journal, explores the various ways wikis are being used in the classroom.
- “Wiki: Don’t Lose That Number”
http://www.ajr.org/article_printable.asp?id=3947
- Jennifer Dorroh, in American Journalism Review, explains one of the downsides of wiki collaboration.
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| Student Assessment/Reflections |
Students can be assessed through their song responses, class discussion, and group participation. They are to complete both the group participation assessment sheet and the Online Self-reflection Checklist. Carefully review the students’ comments, and provide appropriate feedback on their participation with this lesson. In addition, use the Wiki Rubric to assess student participation in the class project. If you are teaching this lesson for the first time, make sure to get student input as to the strengths and weaknesses of the assignment.
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1 - Students read a wide range of print and nonprint texts to build an understanding of texts, of themselves, and of the cultures of the United States and the world; to acquire new information; to respond to the needs and demands of society and the workplace; and for personal fulfillment. Among these texts are fiction and nonfiction, classic and contemporary works.
2 - Students read a wide range of literature from many periods in many genres to build an understanding of the many dimensions (e.g., philosophical, ethical, aesthetic) of human experience.
3 - Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).
4 - Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language (e.g., conventions, style, vocabulary) to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes.
5 - Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes.
6 - Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions (e.g., spelling and punctuation), media techniques, figurative language, and genre to create, critique, and discuss print and nonprint texts.
7 - Students conduct research on issues and interests by generating ideas and questions, and by posing problems. They gather, evaluate, and synthesize data from a variety of sources (e.g., print and nonprint texts, artifacts, people) to communicate their discoveries in ways that suit their purpose and audience.
8 - Students use a variety of technological and information resources (e.g., libraries, databases, computer networks, video) to gather and synthesize information and to create and communicate knowledge.
9 - Students develop an understanding of and respect for diversity in language use, patterns, and dialects across cultures, ethnic groups, geographic regions, and social roles.
11 - Students participate as knowledgeable, reflective, creative, and critical members of a variety of literacy communities.
12 - Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes (e.g., for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information).
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