Get your journals out and do a KWL with the four prompts of Authors and the time periods in which they lived. I am going to put some ideas on the board to guide whole class discussion and journaling such as; After discussing what we know and what we want to know, we will listen to some of the works with a short break for discussion and reflection in between.  Some works I will read Phillis Wheatly, Langston Hughes, and Tupac Shakur, Billie Holiday has a recorded version. Students,  I want you to respond in freestyle in your journals to these poems.