Last updated: August 2, 2019
Lesson Plan
PATERRES Part 1: ALTARS
- Grade Level:
- High School: Ninth Grade through Twelfth Grade
- Subject:
- Literacy and Language Arts,Social Studies
- Lesson Duration:
- 90 Minutes
- Common Core Standards:
- 8.RI.1, 8.RI.2, 8.RI.3, 8.RI.4, 8.RI.5, 8.RI.6, 9-10.RI.1, 9-10.RI.2, 9-10.RI.3, 9-10.RI.4, 9-10.RI.5, 9-10.RI.6, 11-12.RI.1, 11-12.RI.2, 11-12.RI.4
- State Standards:
- Louisiana US.1.5 C1
- Additional Standards:
- National Council for the Social Studies
Ia, Ib, Ic - Thinking Skills:
- Remembering: Recalling or recognizing information ideas, and principles. Understanding: Understand the main idea of material heard, viewed, or read. Interpret or summarize the ideas in own words. Analyzing: Break down a concept or idea into parts and show the relationships among the parts.
Essential Question
How do we preserve the memories of great people and events of the past?
Who decides which events and people should be memorialized?
Who from our past do you feel should be memorialized?
Who from our past do you feel should not be memorialized?
Objective
Understand the role of altars in the preservation of memory and honoring the past.
Understand altars can shape and shift meanings of the items they use.
Better understand their own beliefs.
Further develop their skills in reading analysis and photographic analysis.
Background
This is a two part lesson. Students will read the section Paterres in the text. This relates to the artistic/spiritual practice of building small altars. They will analyze the reading through use of an organizer, and analyze photographs using the photograph analysis template developed by the National Archives. In Part Two students will create their own altars that reflect their beliefs. The altars do not have to be religious in nature.
MATERIALS REQUIRED:
- Text Le Ker Kréyol.
- Text organizer handout for students.
- Text key for teacher.
- Photo analysis sheet for students, photocopied front and back, two per student, resulting in 4 photo analysis templates for each student.
- Some means of projecting organizer to assist students.
- Some means of projecting the photos in the text.
- Some means of projecting the photo analysis sheet.
- Each student will need a box, such as a shoebox or larger, for altar creation, and various items of personal meaning. These will be used in PART 2.
- Altar grading rubric for use in Part 2.
- Gallery Walk sheet for use in Part 2.
Preparation
Previous lessons will have sufficiently prepared teacher and students for this lesson.
Materials
Worksheet designed by the National Archives that will guide students through analysis of a photograph. This could also be used as an assessment.
Download National Archives Photo Analysis Worksheet
This is an organizer that students will fill in as they read a selection on Paterres, or altars. It also contains a KEY for the teacher if you wish yo use it as an assessment.
Download Paterres Organizer for Students and Key for Teacher.
This is a copy of the reading from the text. It is numbered to match the ORGANIZER so the teacher can help students read the text and properly fill in the ORGANIZER.
Download Teacher Key to match text to organizer.
Lesson Hook/Preview
ACTIVATION OF PRIOR KNOWLEDGE.
CLASS DISCUSSION: 5 to 10 minutes.
At this point you are bringing about student thought and preparing them for the lesson. You are not looking for specific answers. All students have had contact with altars, either in church, synagogue, mosque, gurdwara, etc. If you wish, this opening discussion could be preceded by a quick write in which students respond to one or more of these questions below. This can prepare students to share in the discussion.- Discussion:
- What do you think of when you hear the word altar?
- What altars have you seen? (Some students might be familiar with roadside altars.)
- Have you seen any famous altars? (Example, Altar at Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome or the Golden Temple at Amritsar.)
- What is the purpose of an altar?
- Do any of you have altars at home? (Muslim, Catholic, Hindu, Buddhist, and Sikh students are most likely to have altars at home.)
- Do altars always have to be religious?
- What would be the point of a non-religious altar?
- Is religious the same thing as spiritual? Why or why not?
- (Upon completing of the discussion, tell students that we will be looking at the use of altars by the enslaved and formerly enslaved community, and how those altars act as a source of strength and healing.)
Procedure
1.READING AND ANALYSIS OF THE TEXT
TIME REQUIRED: 10 to 15 minutes for reading. 15-25 minutes if reading and organizer completion are done simultaneously.
Read text section Paterres.
- Reading can be done silently, or as a whole class reading. Reading with no discussion will take 10 to 15 minutes.
- You can do the reading as a whole class activity which combines reading with analysis, as described below, for a total of 15 to 25 minutes. Though this takes longer, it eventually saves time by combining reading with the later text analysis. You should base this decision on the reading level of students and the time you have to complete the lesson.
- Discuss/Analyze
- To speed up analysis, you may do this as a whole class exercise while doing the initial reading (as described above).
WHOLE CLASS READING AND ANALYSIS.
This will take 15 to 25 minutes.
- Hand out the organizer.
- Project a copy of the organizer
- Read the text together. Discuss the questions as the class reads the selection. See the TEACHER’S KEY for assistance.
- If you did NOT engage in a whole class completion of the organizer, students can do that now alone, in groups, or through use of the 5/5/5/5/ method. Count on an additional 20 minutes of work is completion of organizer is done separately from initial reading of text.
2. PHOTO ANALYSIS.
Time required: 10 minutes.
For less use of time, use the method below. Alternatively, require students to individually analyze each photograph. Requiring analysis of each photo will require from 20 to 30 minutes.
Photo Analysis worksheet is found under LESSON MATERIALS, or download photo analysis sheet from this site https://www.archives.gov/files/education/lessons/worksheets/photo_analysis_worksheet_former.pdf
Divide the class into 4 groups.
- This can be most easily done by counting off the class 1,2,3,4.
- Picture 1 :First page of PATERRES.A cross with eyes.
- Picture 2: Immediately below picture 1. A graveyard with candles.
- Picture 3: Third page of the reading. The top three sections above the man in the botanica store.
- Picture 4: Bottom picture on the next page, immediately below the picture of the San Malo altar.
- Tell students that as they analyze their pictures they are not to refer to the text. You could photocopy the pictures if you wish and hand them out for analysis.
Hand out the Photo Analysis Worksheet.
- Each sheet should have the analysis template on front and back.
- Review the blank worksheet with students. Answer any questions about the sheet.
- Tell the students that they are responsible for analyzing the picture that matches their number.
- Allow them 10 minutes to fill in their photo analysis papers.
PHOTO ANALYSIS CLASS DISCUSSION
20 minutes.
Tell students that ONE photograph analysis will be graded, but that they do not know which one. Therefore, they need to fill in information on all of them during discussion.
Distribute another double sided photo analysis sheet. They now have FOUR analysis sheets, counting the one they have already used.
Conduct a class discussion on each photo.
- Students give answers, not instructor.
- Students fill in as discussion proceeds.
- It is best for instructor to record student answers. You could fill in as students discuss, and then take a screen shot of the form before moving on to next photo.
Choose a photo to grade. Have all students turn in that sheet.
Grade for clarity and completeness.
The point of the assessment is to ensure that students followed the discussion, not that they originally correctly analyzed the pictures.
Vocabulary
- All Saints Night: The night of All Saints Day, which is dedicated to the remembrance and honoring of those who have died, especially those who might be considered saints.
- Code Noir (Louisiana): A system of laws that governed actions and relations of people of color, especially enslaved persons, including their relations with whites.
- Cosmograms: Sacred symbols.
- Fon: An ethnic/tribal/language group of Western Africa, especially in the area of Benin.
- Melange: A mix of different elements often not expected to go together.
- Mimetic: To imitate or represent.
- Paterres: Altar
- Reconciliation: To bring things back together that had been separated.
- Ritual: In religion, a series of actions meant to bring about some religious or spiritual result.
- Saint Marron: A Voodoo saint based upon the real life figure of San Malo, a leader of a free society of escaped slaves.
- Veves: Symbols sacred in the Voodoo religious tradition.
- Voodoo: A belief system in many parts of America made up of a combination of traditional African, European, and Native American religious and spiritual elements.
Assessment Materials
ASSESSMENT TITLE
Paterres Organizer for Students and Key for Teacher.
SUMMARY
This is the key for the ORGANIZER if the teacher wishes to use it as an assessment. See the organizer for text.
ASSESSMENT TITLE
National Archives Photo Analysis Worksheet
SUMMARY
Worksheet designed by the National Archives that will guide students through analysis of a photograph. This could also be used as an assessment.
Supports for Struggling Learners
Since the reading is complex, the best support is to do the reading as a whole class activity.
Alternatively, you could group struggling students together and do the whole class activity only with them while other students analyze the reading individually.