Teaching with Hip Hop in the 7-12 Grade Classroom

This book presents practical approaches for engaging with Hip Hop music and culture in the classroom. As the most popular form of music and youth culture today, Hip Hop is a powerful medium through which students can explore their identities and locate themselves in our social world. Designed for novice and veteran teachers, this book is filled with pedagogical tools, strategies, lesson plans, and real-world guidance on integrating Hip Hop into the curriculum. Through a wide range of approaches and insights, Lauren Leigh Kelly invites teachers to look to popular media culture to support students’ development and critical engagement with texts.

Covering classroom practice, assessment strategies, and curricular and standards-based guidelines, the lessons in this book will bolster students’ linguistic and critical thinking skills and help students to better understand and act upon the societal forces around them. The varied activities, assignments, and handouts are designed to inspire teachers and easily facilitate modification of the assignments to suit their own contexts.

The impact of Hip Hop on youth culture is undeniable, now more than ever; this is the perfect book for teachers who want to connect with their students, support meaning-making in the classroom, affirm the validity of youth culture, and foster an inclusive and engaging classroom environment.