Student Activities for "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings"
Noted poet, author and civil rights leader Maya Angelou's debut autobiography, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," a National Book Award nominee and bestseller, remains one of her most complex and controversial works. Angelou's brutally honest narrative of her coming-of-age gives way to empowering messages that can inspire high school students. Curricular ideas for young adults based on the book can range from analytical to creative.
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Retrospective on the Author
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Create a multi-media presentation for a school assembly. Creating an expose on the author teaches research methodology, organization, and the conceptualization of diverse ideas. Consider a multi-media approach for student presentation, rather than assigning written commentary. Divide students into tasks, including a visual, aural, writing and editing teams. Compile relevant photographs and images. For example, the aural team excerpts Angelou's recordings, the editing team sequences materials, and the writing team scripts a narrative of the presentation.
Literature
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Challenge student to write imaginatively by eliminating standard book reports. Explore the differences between the autobiographic and memoir aspects of the book. Autobiography accentuates personal data and spans an entire lifetime. Memoir is more reflective and focuses on an moment in the author's life. Ask students to choose one word from the narrative that resonated personally, write it in on a slip of paper, and place it in a large envelope. Then pass the envelope around the room for each student to pull a word out and write an essay using the new key word three times. Reading essays aloud, students then analyze each paper for the key word and discuss why that word was significant.
In another activity, students focus on the moment when Angelou does not speak. They write in first person and to say everything Angelou might have said. Students can also write a one-page autobiography of their own lives from infancy to present, titling their papers, "I Know Why" and substituting a different symbol for "the caged bird."
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Dramatization
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Stage poets-students to read in a group performance. Creating a dramatization of an autobiography teaches the art of adaptation and interpretation, and characterization. Drama allows students to experience and illustrate viscerally the subtext of the author's purpose.
Create a series of class-written monologues. Assign students a name from the book and instruct students to craft a monologue written in the character's voice. Encourage students to integrate their character's actions in their monologue.
Students may dress in that character's clothes, memorize the monologue, and perform it.
Group Poem
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Create a performance poem with teams of four students. Each student writes a four-line poem with the line "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" as one of the four lines. One team at a time stands up in a horizontal line. The first student reads only his first line. Without interruption, the next student reads her first line, until all four have read their first lines in succession. The group poem continues seamlessly in the same manner with the second, third and fourth line. Thus a new poem is created with the recurring rhythm of the title, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings."
Considerations
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Maya Angelou's book "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" contains difficult graphic material, including murder and sexual assault. Although "I Know Why the Caged Birds Sings" garnered bestselling status, the book has a history of having been banned. Create a classroom atmosphere of trust. Facilitate open discussions with questions and answers. Include the charged aspects of the book for discussion prior to student assignments.
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References
Resources
- Photo Credit Jupiterimages/Brand X Pictures/Getty Images Kris Connor/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images Jupiterimages/Comstock/Getty Images
