This unit was created by a team of educators in the Piper School District, as part of the 2021 cohort of The 1619 Project Education Network. It is designed for facilitation across approximately five days of class composed of four classes of 83 minutes and one class of 45 minutes.
Objectives
Students will be able to…
- Analyze a text in preparation for a class discussion and a brief research project about the history of “American Pop”
- Identify and analyze the anatomy of a Socratic seminar
- Prepare inquiry questions to actively engage their peers in a Socratic seminar
- Demonstrate civil discussion and listening skills in Socratic seminars focused on The 1619 Project podcast “The Birth of American Music”
Unit Overview
How is American society shaped by identities, beliefs, and practices?
Students will delve into this question -- and many others -- as they explore the various roots of American music and the history that cultivated it. Students will SWIRL through the podcast “The Birth of American Music” by speaking, writing, interacting, reading, and listening. Listening will be key: listening to music— its intonation and inflection, and comparing and contrasting the features— and civilly listening to each other in a Socratic seminar.
Performance Task
“The Birth of American Music” Socratic seminar
Students will engage in a Socratic seminar focused on episode 3: “The Birth of American Music” from the 1619 podcast. Students will prepare for this seminar by listening to the podcast, annotating the transcript, and synthesizing ideas from small group discussions and written reflections.
In a Socratic seminar, students help one another understand the ideas, issues, and values reflected in a text through a group discussion format. Students are responsible for facilitating their group discussion around the ideas in the text. It is a discussion, not a debate, where students practice how to listen to one another and understand the perspectives of others.
5-day unit plan for teachers, including pacing, texts and multimedia resources, rubrics, and performance tasks for the unit. Download below, or scroll down to read the complete unit plan.
Unit Resources
Kansas State Curricular Standards
Social Studies
4. Societies experience continuity and change over time
English
Reading for Key Ideas & Details
RI.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.
RI.11-12.3 - Analyze a complex set of ideas or sequence of events and explain how specific individuals, ideas, or events interact and develop over the course of the text.
Writing
W.11-12.9 - Draw evidence from grades 11-12 literary or informational texts, to support analysis, reflection, and research.
Speaking & Listening
SL.11-12.1 - Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussion (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grades 11-12 topics, texts, and issues, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively