Today we’re going to take a little bit of time to, in three groups, learn some more about Paul Lawrence Dunbar’s life, times, and ways that he’s taught in public schools. To do that I’m going to break you up into the following three groups, and ask your group to answer the pertinent question below, using the resources listed under your group title. Also, make sure that your group, somehow, looks at all of the resources listed under your resources. (You might think about divided up the list of resources to accomplish this.) The groups are:

· Paul Lawrence Dunbar’s Biography and other Works

· Paul Lawrence Dunbar’s Historical Circumstances

· Paul Lawrence Dunbar in the Contemporary English Classroom

The questions that you need to answer, and bring back as information to the whole class, are below:

Group Questions:

o Paul Lawrence Dunbar’s Biography and other Works: What are some things that we, as a class, need to know about Dunbar’s life from your research? Why might this information be important to our reading of Dunbar’s work?

o Paul Lawrence Dunbar’s Historical Circumstances: What are some things you can tell us, the rest of the class, about the times in which Dunbar lived? Why might this information be important to our reading of Dunbar’s work?

o Paul Lawrence Dunbar in the Contemporary English Classroom: What can you tell us about the way Dunbar is being taught in our public schools? Why might this information be important to our reading of Dunbar’s work?

Resources

Paul Lawrence Dunbar’s Biography and other Works

· A comprehensive list of links from the University of Dayton’s Paul Laurence Dunbar Website: http://www.plethoreum.org/dunbar/links.asp

· Dunbar’s biography from the University of Dayton’s Paul Laurence Dunbar Website: http://www.plethoreum.org/dunbar/biopld.asp

· Poets.org’s biography of Dunbar: http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=310

· Look at an exchange of letters between Dunbar and Alice Ruth Moore: http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/exhibits/treasures/american/dunbar.html

· Not Satisfied with the resources? See what you can find online using the following search engines:

Paul Lawrence Dunbar’s Historical Circumstances

· Check out this elaborate timeline of U.S. history. See if you can find any interesting events that occurred while Dunbar lived. (Dunbar’s dates are 1872-1906): http://chaos1.hypermart.net/hist/tush.html

· Compare the above timeline of U.S. history to a timeline of African American History provided by Gale Publishing: http://www.galegroup.com/free_resources/bhm/timeline.htm

· Read a short piece on lynchings and their history in the United States: http://www.crimelibrary.com/classics2/carnival/index.htm

· Finally, take a look at some statistics, from the last census, that might give you a sense of contemporary African-American life in the United States: http://www.infoplease.com/spot/bhmcensus1.html

· Not Satisfied with the resources? See what you can find online using the following search engines:

Paul Lawrence Dunbar in the Contemporary English Classroom

· Some suggestions for teaching Dunbar’s work from the University of Dayton’s website devoted to Dunbar: http://www.plethoreum.org/dunbar/teacher.asp

· From the ALAN review, check out this idea for reading Dunbar against Walter Dean Meyers: http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/ALAN/winter99/west.html

· Check out this unit plan from the Yale-New Haven Teacher Institute’s website. It’s geared towards middle schoolers: http://www.cis.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/guides/1978/2/78.02.01.x.html

· Compare the above unit plan to one aimed at high schoolers—it’s also from the Yale-New Haven Teacher Institute’s website: http://www.cis.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/guides/1994/2/94.02.07.x.html

· Not Satisfied with the resources? See what you can find online using the following search engines: