Uncovering Human Truth Across Genres

Stephanie Misko, English, William Amos Hough High School

Final Unit (PDF)

Implementing Common Core Standards

200 Word Synopsis

Students will use African American literature that exposes African American history to analyze narrative techniques and perspective.  The center text will be The Help by Kathryn Stockett, a novel that examines the Deep South in the 1960s.  After completing a novel study on The Help, students will evaluate the reliability of the novel by adding a variety of non-fiction accounts to the conversation.   Students will analyze songs, art, film, memoir, and narrative and consider how each genre expands and limits the audience’s understanding of an event or experience.

 Ultimately, students will use this conversation to aid in their creation of a multigenre memoir project.  The project asks that students express the “human truth”, or single theme, of a personal experience by expressing it in four different genres.  All genres combined should create a complete understanding of the experience.