Alan Newman

Speech Tuesday, February 19, 2013 Lesson Plan Speech: Beautiful v Oensive: a look at controversial songs

Standard

Speaking and Listening 12.3: Evaluate a speaker's point of view, reasoning, and use of evidence and rhetoric, assessing the stance, premises, links among ideas, word choice, points of emphasis and tones used.

Objective/Goal Procedure

Students should be able to listen to the language of a variety of controversial music (as dened by public response as well as "explicit content" label) and identify oensive and beautiful components.

1. Introduce objective and warn students of explicit nature of songs. All students are seniors and a majority are 18 years old. This is important because of the maturity level needed to listen to music of such explicit nature. Remind student that the language used in the music does not give them license to use such language in the classroom. 2. List of songs "What's Your Fantasy?" by Ludacris "I Kissed a Girl" by Katy Perry "Kim" by Eminem "Love the Way You Lie" by Eminem featuring Rhiana "Cop Killer" by Body Count "Thrift Shop" by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis

Questions students must answer in writing and focus on during discussion: What this song oensive? What makes this song beautiful? What is your opinion?

3.

Before playing each song, give very short background of artist and song

4. Play each song for no more than 4 minutes, depending on how in depth discussions are going. If discussions are going well, limit amount of song played in order to have time to play each song. 5. For "Cop Killer," 1. Show quote of Former President of National Association of Chiefs of Police 2. Show clip of Ice-T defending language and content of song

6. What students should take away from lesson What are common reasons that each song has in terms of oensiveness overly sexual violent sexist inappropriate language such as curse words What are common themes that each song has in terms of beauty there are those that might nd all of the reasons that the songs are oensive to be beautiful everything about the music other than the lyrics or subject matter the artists musical skill Students should understand that the terms beauty and oensive are opinions, which are determined by any given listener/viewer's perception. They should understand even the perspectives they do not agree with.

Assessment of Objective

Students should answer three questions in writing for each song as the lesson progresses. Collect answers for credit and assessment as the end of the period.