A scheme of work for level 5-6 Literacy students on Bob Dylan's 'Hurricane', exploring expressions of the black civil rights movement in arts.

1. The Hurricane, week 1
Poetry and Song

2. Lesson objectives
• Understand the plot of ‘Hurricane’
• To interpret meaning from verse

3. Starter
Watch the clip and make notes on what you think
the story is about.
What are the themes?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTzvLMUf
wB8

4. IN GROUPS OF 3
Read the lyrics
• Summarize what happens in each verse
E.g.
Pistol shots ring out in the bar-room night
Enter Patty Valentine from the upper hall
She sees a bartender in a pool of blood
Cries out, "My God, they killed them all!”
A bartender has been shot and a woman called Patty
Valentine has discovered the body in a bar.
Write your interpretations down. Put your group’s names on the sheet and keep them together.

5. • What happens in the story?
• Are the same themes in the song as in the
clip? Which ones?
• Which lyrics match to this clip?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5Gb7V5-pts

6. Lesson Objectives
• Draft effective lyrics to convey an opinion

7. Listen to the protest music
• Pick the most powerful lines
• Mix them together to make a meaningful
poem
• Draft 2 verses
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0A_N-wmiMo I’m black and I’m proud
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8LesTvNuaw Mannish Boy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdbQtFHlx4k I am somebody
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ri7TcukAJ8 Smokestack lightening
• Extension: Add words from the word bank

8. Example
There's some good in every man
Black, white
Give them respect
Give them a chance
Because until every individual is free
We can’t strengthen through diversity
I am somebody
Yet I’m silenced, and I’ll never be free
I’ll never be me
Until I can speak things the way I see
Until that day, I am nobody
Invisible, but bound
By the ties of society
Why can’t you hear me cryin’?
Lines from songs
Lines by me
How can I improve this?
(look at the vocab list)

9. Lesson Objectives
• Write effective poetry to convey an opinion
Instructions
• Look back over what you wrote yesterday – put it
together and perform it to each other
• Your partner needs to recommend 3 changes
about how to make it more powerful
• Alter your poem, and write one more verse using
vocab from the word bank (2 or more words)

10. Lesson Objectives
• I can use stylistic techniques to convey a
message
• I can put a story into verse

11. Using your poem from yesterday
• Add the story of Rubin Cater into your poem –
take 3 of your bullet points from the plot that
you will use
• Write in first person – it is Rubin Carter singing
it
• Use words from the word bank

12. Stylistic techniques
• Repetition for effect
• Metaphor/ simile
• Keeping rhythm/ understanding syllable
counts in lines
• Finding ways of emphasising your main point
(e.g. in Mannish Boy: ‘No B, O child, Y’)

13. Lesson Objectives
• Write your own version of Bob Dylan’s
Hurricane
• 5 verses using stylistic techniques and taking
elements from the biography

14. The Hurricane, week 2
Diaries

15. Lesson Objectives
• I can use appropriate vocabulary to convey a
traumatic emotional experience

16. In pairs
• Remember a time when you were blamed for
something you didn’t do – tell your partner
and come up with 5 or more adjectives to
describe the situation and how you felt
• Feedback

17. In pairs
• Recap the Rubin Carter biography (the events
leading up to his imprisonment). Make notes on
the important bits if you wish
• Rally Robin – use the words you came up with in
a sentence as Rubin Carter when he has just been
sent to jail. 2-3 sentences each. Note them.
• Extension (on your own): use the word bank to
make more sentences, and begin to construct
them into a paragraph
• Read them out to the group – use others’ ideas if
you wish

18. Lesson objectives
• AF5 focus: I can vary sentences for clarity,
purpose and effect

19. Review the protest music and the
quotes section
• Pick lines you and your partner think are powerful and
integrate them into your paragraph from yesterday. Let your
partner read your work and make suggestions.
• You may then change them using different sentences
structures and power openers, as well as coming up with
your own.
• You are writing as Rubin Carter in jail – think about all of the
things in his life that he has now lost for no reason (family,
fame, fortune, boxing career, friends, freedom, peace of
mind)
• 1-2 good paragraphs by the end of the session

20. Lesson objectives
Draw on historical context (events that were
happening at the time of Rubin’s trial and
imprisonment) to inform your writing

21. Listen to ‘I have a dream’
• What is the overall point he is making?
• What techniques does he use to make his
speech powerful?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smEqnnklfY
s

22. The American Dream
Is the idea from the US constitution that ‘all men are created equal’ and are
therefore entitled to equal opportunities in life, regardless of class, race or the
situation they were born into.
‘Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness’
‘Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses, yearning to breath free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.’
‘America, the land of opportunity, the home of the free’

23. In pairs
• Highlight lines you may want to quote/ use as
RC
• How is Martin Luther’s speech applicable to
RC’s situation?

24. Individually
• Write a line you will use from Martin Luther’s speech.
Underneath, explain how it links to Rubin Carter’s
situation
E.g.
“One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in
the corners of American society and finds himself an exile
in his own land.”
This line of MLK’s speech is applicable to RC because he
was exiled from society through being sent to prison. He
was imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit – he was
imprisoned for being of the lesser favoured race.

25. Lesson objective
• I can vary sentences for clarity, purpose and
effect to write a diary entry exploring a
traumatic emotional experience.
• Write your diary entry

26. Use all of the material you have been
given within your diary entry
• Martin Luther’s speech – quote it and reference MLK
• Quotes from RC
• Your own work (poem/ song included) and words
describing how he felt
• Use a variety of sentence structures and power
openers
• You may use the protest songs if you wish (but
sparsely).
• 2-3 paragraphs

27. The Hurricane, week 3
“ The newspapers – they all went
along for the ride…”

28. Lesson objectives
• To understand how to use different types of
language for different audiences

29. • Facts: Things that are true – quotes, statistics,
videos and pictures of real life.
• Opinions: Things that someone thinks or
believes. Opinions are not necessarily true.

30. Read these articles – how do they
target a certain audience?
• http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/dale-
cregan-trial-police-officers-1591812
• http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/feb/07/d
ale-cregan-trial-hail-of-bullets

31. How does each newspaper appeal to
the reader? Answer all the questions
and quote the article
• Highlight the words/ pictures that are emotional/
opinionated
• Highlight the words/ pictures that are factual
• Count them
• What balance does of emotional/ factual does each
newspaper have?
• Which is more interesting?
• Which is more reliable?
• Extension: Write one factual and one opinionated
sentence about Rubin Carter

32. Lesson objective
• Use appropriate language to appeal to a
specific audience

33. Which kind of newspaper do you
prefer?
• Why?
• Make a spider diagram of words you would
use to describe the situation of Rubin Carter in
‘Hurricane’.
• Label them factual or opinionated
• Eg: ‘the unfair treatment of Carter, aged 23’
opinion fact

34. Rubin Carter’s
trial
Unfair framed
one fatally wounded, nearly blind man
2 people dead
A boxer from New Jersey
Arthur Bello found on the scene
Bello testifies against Carter

35. Tabloid Broadsheet

36. You are in competing teams to write
the most convincing and sensational
article
• Draft 1 argument each (every member of the team
needs to have a different point) in the style of a
newspaper. Copy it into your books.
 Formal
 Brief
 Speaks as though it has no opinion (neutral)
You will have a debate at the end and will gain points for
style, word choices and how well you argue.

37. Lesson objective
• Plan a newspaper report with a clear point of
view about RC trial

38. Plan your own newspaper article on
the triple murder
• Tabloid/ broadsheet, pro/ anti Carter?
• Plan what you will write in each section (bullet point)
• Compose sentences in pairs for each section – use the
language we have gathered in previous weeks
• Use 3 different sentence structures
• Refer to my examples for help
Tomorrow we will use the computers to type them up
and add pictures.

40. FINSIH your plan
• Opening paragraph
• Summary of what’s happened (why Rubin is
on trial)
• Who’s involved
• Quotes from witnesses
• Need 2 - 4 paragraphs

41. Extension
• Analyse your work – does it fit the
conventions of the tabloid/ broadsheet? Tell
me how and why in reference to the text and
the way you’ve laid your article out.
• Mark it in relation to the assessment criteria.

42. Lesson objective
• Differentiate style between a script and an
article

43. Prep for drama
• American news programmes
• Are they different to English programmes?
• How?
• Which one will you do for your performance?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ue7Oc324veI
(ABC)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeNgLWdse_M
(BBC)
BBC: Reith Doctrine – the media’s purpose is to ‘inform, educate and entertain’.

44. Plan your news report in groups
• 5-10 minutes long
Think about:
• who you will interview (assign roles)
• how you will present Carter (innocent/ guilty)
• what kind of news programme you’re using
• where your interviews are taking place (at the
court, scene of the crime, on the street)
• will you need a photo of any of the witnesses/
criminals?

45. Lesson objectives (Drama)
To present Carter’s story in a news programme
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TSJhIZmL0
A (BBC)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jYupAk9I_
U (CNN)