Knowledge Menu Part 3: Examples

Grade: 8th

Corinne Gumann
Concept: Voice
Categor
y
Poetry

Title
1. Holy
Thursday
Songs of
Experienc
e

Author/Ye
ar
William
Blake

2. I am
the
People,
The Mob

Carl
Sandburg

3. We
wear the
mask

Paul
Lawrence
Dunbar

Description
Blake is expressing his disgust with the
government for letting their orphans
starve and having one day that the public
can help the children to feel better about
themselves. I would want to pair this
poem with the poem I am the People,
The Mob and ask the students to do the
activity The ABCs of comparing and
contrasting, since both of these poems
are about crowds and how to fix problems
of poverty and social injustice.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/17
2918
This is a poem about how we have the
power to make changes in society if we
learn how to use our voices to incite this
change we wish to see in the world. I
would pair this poem with Holy
Thursday so the students can compare
and contrast two different ways crowds
are handling different social injustices.
(Described in box above)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/17
4303
This is about the opposite of using your
voice, it is about hiding it away so no one
knows how you are feeling. I would want
to pair this poem with The Voice poem
to get the students looking at opposites,
between using your voice and ignoring
your voice. I would want the students to
focus on picking a side, Gallaghers taking
a stance kind of writing between using
your voice or hiding it, and the students
will have to defend their positions.

Knowledge Menu Part 3: Examples

Short
Story

4. The
Voice

Shel
Shilverstei
n

5. Answer
to a
Childs
Question

Samuel
Taylor
Coleridge

1.The TellTale Heart

Edgar Allan
Poe (1843)

2. The Fox
and the
Lion

Aesop
(1882)

3.A Jury of
Her Peers

Susan
Glaspell
(1927)

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/17
3467
This short poem encourages people to
listen to the voice inside themselves that
tells them what they should or should not
do. This is a focus on yourself and what
you think and not what other people
influence you to do. I would pair this
poem with We Wear the Mask
(Described in box directly above)
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/thevoice-34/
A poem about how to express feelings of
love and how to know what it is you are
feeling. I would want to use this poem as
a model for the students to write their
own poetry where they have to reflect a
feeling or emotion that they have.
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/ans
wer-childs-question
The lack of communication between
characters leads one of the characters to
do something that they deeply regret for
the remainder of the story. His
treacherous act is haunting him until he
cant take the guilt anymore and
confesses everything. Since this story is
about a man obsessed, I would want the
students to do Beers Most Important Word
activity to obsess over one word from
the story that hold meaning for the whole
story.
A fox meets a lion and is scared of him.
The fox needs to learn how to use their
voice to get over this fear and
discrimination that the fox is feeling
towards the lion. For this reading I would
want the students to create a journal
entry about a time that they might have
treated someone different because that
person was different than them, as a way
to incorporate their own voice to the
situation.
When someone is murdered the people at
the trial do not believe that the mans wife
has anything to offer in terms of useful

Knowledge Menu Part 3: Examples

Novel

4. After
Twenty
Years

O. Henry
(1906)

5. The
Guilty
Party

O. Henry
(1917)

1.Ill Give
You the
Sun

Jandy
Nelson
(2014)

2.Wonder

Raquel J.
Palacio
(2012)

information. Her voice turned out to be

the most useful in the trial. I would ask
the students to do a 1-10 sheet, so like
in a trial, they can organize the important
details to understand the story and use
their own thoughts.
A policeman discovers that a criminal he
is searching for happens to be an old
friend. This story follows this mans
internal struggle about what to do in this
bizarre situation. Does he help a friend or
do his job? I would ask the students to do
a Gallagher, Whats the connection
writing, to analyze the connection
between friendship and justice in relation
to how they would handle the situation.
The story of a girl who is overcome with
jealousy and turns towards violence. This
girl cannot express her feelings in an
acceptable way and makes bad decisions.
Knowledge on how to use her voice could
have helped her. I would use the
Gallagher, How does _________ influence
peoples behavior, in terms of jealousy. I
would ask the students to relate the
characters feelings to their own feelings
of jealousy and how they would have done
something different.
I chose this novel because it focuses on
the importance of communication on
developing, maintaining, and repairing
relationships. Since this book revolves
around the characters being artists, I
would pair this book with the Creature
painting from the art section and the
childrens book The Dot to have the
students write a journal entry about some
emotions then create their own art piece
to go with it.
This novel is about a little boy with a facial
deformity who is attending a school for
the first time in his life and about the
trails he must face by his new peers. He
learns how to use his voice to make new
friends in a new school with people who
do not know how to react to his deformity.

Knowledge Menu Part 3: Examples

Drama

3.EveryDa
y

David
Levithan
(2013)

1.A Dolls
House

Henrik
Ibsen
(1879)

2.Trifles

Susan
Glaspell
(1916)

3. Beauty
is a Beast

D.M.
Larson
(1996)

I would ask the students to complete a

Gallagher Why do _________ behave this
way, activity, filling in the blank with
Augusts classmates. I want the students
to come up with possible reasons why the
main characters classmates treat him the
way they do because of his looks. This
may get the students to explore their own
prejudices.
When a person never wakes up as the
same looking person two days in a row, it
is difficult to have relationships. The
character in this novel must learn how to
use their voice to make sure that he can
maintain the most important relationship
to him. I would want the students to do a
RAFT assignment where they are
pretending to be the main character
writing a letter to the girl he loves, trying
to convince her that hes not crazy and
hes telling the truth about who he is.
In this short play, a wife decides that she
cannot take living underneath her
husband anymore and takes action
against it. After being unhappy for so long
she leaves her husband and goes to find a
new life for herself. For this I would ask
the students to write a Gallagher Whos to
blame, assignment. This is so the students
could explore who is to blame for the
unhappiness of the wife, her husband, or
herself.
Two women discover mysterious secrets
about their neighbors and must decide
what they are going to do with this new
information. I would want the students to
answer the question, what would you
do? This would let the students explore
how they think they would handle a
similar situation about scandal.
This is a play that focuses in
communication between the princess and
the man she ends up falling in love with,
who is a blind prince who doesnt care
about whatever beauty she has. I would
want students to compare this play to the

Knowledge Menu Part 3: Examples

Childre
ns Lit

Non
Fiction

1.
Mousterpi
ece

Jane
Breskin
Zalben
(2012)

2. The Dot

Peter H.
Reynolds
(2003)

3. Oh the
Places
Youll Go

Dr. Seuss
(1990)

1. A
Modest
Proposal

Jonathan
Swift
(1729)

2. First
they Came

Martine
Niemoeller

story of Beauty and the Beast that they all

know, the Disney version, and write about
the differences and how that affects their
interpretation of their own voice when it
comes to themselves.
http://freedrama.net/beauty.htm
This is a story about a little mouse who is
able to discover his own voice through the
use of modern art. For this reading I would
ask students to write a Gallagher Burning
Questions activity to explore the use of art
in expressing ones voice as opposed to
using words.
This is the story about a little girl who
discovers that she can use art to express
her voice, even though she first believed
that she was not any good at art. I would
pair this with Ill Give You the Sun and the
Creature painting to pair art focused texts
together to help broaden the influences of
the journal entry that I want them to
write. (Explained in the Novel section)
A childrens book thats really a book for
all ages about believing in yourself,
knowing what you want, and going for it. I
would want to pair this book with the song
7 Years. Since both of these texts involve
growing up I would want them to write a
Gallagher Express and Reflect piece of
writing to invoke their own feelings about
growing up.
In a satirical style, Swift voices his concern
about the famine in Ireland. He uses satire
to get his point across that terrible things
are happening in their country and
nobody is trying to help them, specifically
England, who is Irelands greatest rival
during this time. For this reading I would
want the students to complete a Beers
Probable Passage to being to understand
what the reading is trying to say.
http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html
This is about a man who is confounded in
guilt because he did not use his voice to
speak out against the Nazi regime in
World War II. For this reading I would want

Knowledge Menu Part 3: Examples

Art

Media/
CE

3. Diary of
a Teenage
Refugee

Amira
(2013)

1.Jupiter
From The
Planets

Gustav
Holst

2.Creature

Laurie
Proctor
Lefebvre

3.The
Scream

Edvard
Munch
(1893)

1.You
Belong
with Me

Taylor Swift
(2008)

2. 7 Years

Lukas

the students to complete a Beers SWBS

activity so they can grasp the complexity
of the situation that the author found
himself in during the time of WWII.
http://commonlit.org/texts/first-they-came
A Syrian refugee living in Lebanon telling
about her experiences leaving her home
to move to a new country, to live in a
refugee camp. I would want the students
to write a Gallagher Take a stand/Propose
a solution piece when it comes to
refugees moving to foreign countries, and
to focus on how they can use their voice
to invoke change on this issue.
http://commonlit.org/texts/diary-of-ateenage-refugee
A classical music piece where the
students can try to understand the
composers voice through sounds instead
of words. I would want the students to
create a journal entry composed of the
feelings that the piece is giving them and
how they think the composer was feeling
while writing this.
An artist is expressing her voice through
art. This piece seems to have little to no
structure to form any type of painting that
we are used to. I want to pair this piece
with Ill Give You the Sun and The Dot to
have the students work with writing and
art. (Explained more fully in the Novels
section)
This piece is all about the artist
expressing his emotions through his art. I
would ask the students to go a Beers Text
Reformulation to transform the painting
into words based off of what they believe
the artist to be feeling while painting this.
She is trying to get a boy she likes to
notice her instead of the girl hes already
with. This song is a good question on
using ones voice affectively. For this song
I would want the students to do a Beers
Text Reformulation activity to turn the
song into another type of text.
A song about the fear of growing up and

Knowledge Menu Part 3: Examples

Graham
(2016)

3. Dead
Husband
Walking

Eh Bee
Vines
(20132015)

becoming old. I would want to pair this

song with the reading of Oh the Places
Youll Go to write a Gallagher Express and
Reflect piece of writing. Described in the
Childrens Literature section.
A funny use of miscommunication when
using ones voice with your significant
other. I would use this as a hook to get the
students thinking about what it means to
use your voice effectively.