Here is the third lesson plan for The Great Debaters unit plan. This is a reading and discussion lesson on the protagonist of the film, Melvin Tolson, whom Denzel Washington plays with his usual grace and aplomb.
I open this lesson with this context clues worksheet on poetry and this one on prose. I assume it’s obvious that I hope students, from these two active exercises, will understand the difference between poetry and prose, and to use these two conceptual words competently. The mainstay of this lesson is this reading and comprehension worksheet on Melvin Tolson himself. As with the previous lesson, I envisioned this as group work, with each group taking a share of the vocabulary words and comprehension questions. That may not be tenable, depending on the size of your class (or, if you are using this during the COVID19 crisis, depending on the vagaries of online learning). But, this is a fairly flexible document and can be altered and used to best fit your circumstances.
If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
Mark's Text Terminal 