Kaffir Boy: The True Story of a Black Youth's Coming of Age in Apartheid South Africa

Grade Levels

Excerpt

An Excerpt from Mark Mathabane’s Kaffir Boy

Day One

• Bell – ringer – Journal Topic - How does education affect your life? How does it change the way in which you see the world? How might your life be different if you did not go to school? (10 minute free – write). I will informally assess that students are constantly writing.

• On the board, I will write the word “apartheid” and will give the definition of this term as background knowledge for this text.

• Individually, the students will read and summarize the biographical information about Mark Mathabane (Handout)

• I will assess whether or not the students understood the passage by informally checking their notes (Handout). If needed, I will give them the biographical quiz to make sure they have read and understood the material.

• The students will begin to read and annotate the excerpt from Kaffir Boy (339 – 349). I will informally assess that students are reading and understanding by looking at their annotations.

Day Two

• Bell – ringer – Students will copy and define vocabulary words from Kaffir Boy (coterie, admonish, peruse, credence, vehemently). In their annotations, they will underline any other words they do not know and add to their Vocabulary Log (Handout)

• Students will finish reading and annotating the excerpt from Kaffir Boy.

• Using their annotations, students will work with a partner to answer the questions from the reading log (Handout). I will informally assess their reading logs.

• As a class, we will begin to discuss the answers for the reading log.

Day Three

• Bell – ringer – Students will use the vocabulary from Kaffir Boy to practice using analogies (Handout)

• We will finish our discussion of Kaffir Boy and the students’ reading logs.

• I will ask the students to go back to their journal topic from the first day of Kaffir Boy. From this pre- write, they will write a thesis statement and introductory paragraph for an essay concerning this topic.

• I will take up these introductory paragraphs and grade them based on their essay checklist (Handout)

About

This is a lesson plan that I use with an excerpt from this memoir. The page numbers coincide with Glencoe Literature: Reader's Choice Course 5 (2007).