A few weeks back as we approached the time to begin a new writing unit, I talked with my 10-year-old about the editorial writing I had in mind (I had the idea and lots of resources ready to go from the New York Times's Learning Network) and he was uninspired. He didn't think editorials sounded "that fun." I knew that if we went ahead with it, he'd probably get engaged. But at the same time, I was intrigued by the idea of figuring out what type of writing he would want to work on. Previously this year, W had chosen his topics in writing, but I had picked out all the genres we'd focused on so far: personal narratives, research reports, and fantasy stories. Seeing him have agency and ownership for his own learning is something I love about homeschool, and this seemed like a grand opportunity for that. So we started talking about types of writing, including seriously considering starting a kid blog, but the idea that came out on top for him was writing raps.
I don't know anything about rap music, and that fact would have prevented me from considering teaching it in the past. But here I am with our story of the incredibly fun rap writing unit he and I created together, and are still in the midst of. (Or, if you want, skip my story and go right to the end to see one of his raps.)
Why we Chose Rap
We've never listened to rap much as a household; it was hardly on our radar. But last summer, after learning a lot about the American Revolution, W and my husband and I watched Hamilton when it came out on Disney Plus (Hamilton is the reason we acquired Disney Plus), and he's never been the same since. We have listened to the soundtrack probably hundreds of times. He enjoys memorizing his favorite songs and quotes them all the time. He regularly asks me what a particular word or phrase means from one of the songs-- they songs are so rich, packed with details-- and we often research to fully understand. Hamilton was the sum total of the experience he had ever had with rap or hip hop, but its words were crafted in ways that fascinated him, so it was the inspiration for this unit.
Our Mentor Text Chose Itself
It's always good to expose kids to the genre of writing that they are going to be doing by reading a variety of it. I think it's also important to choose one mentor text to examine that you can get a lot of mileage out of. (Focusing on one example text is also an opportunity to choose depth over breadth, which I try to make one of our homeschool mottos.) In this rap writing unit, choosing the right mentor text wasn't an issue; the mentor text was of course Hamilton as a whole but in particular W chose the first song of the play: "Alexander Hamilton."
I'm sure most people have seen Hamilton at this point, but for those who haven't, just to give a taste, it begins with a spoken 37-word question:
"How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman, dropped in the
middle of a forgotten spot in the Caribbean by providence impoverished in
squalor, grow up to be a hero and a scholar?"
W already had the song memorized, and was in awe of this opening sentence, especially, and went around the house saying it constantly (so much so that his 5-year-old sister also goes around the house saying it sometimes, thankfully saying some of the words wrong and not understanding what they mean). When W asked, I was able to gloss over the definition of "whore" and told him I'd explain more when he's older, but he had analyzed and understood all the other references within. The song is incredibly crafted and I thought it was cool that W admired it so much. The writing level of it was certainly far above what I figured he'd be able to create when he took a stab at writing rap, but it was rich example for him to look up to and attempt to approximate.
Teaching
Knowing he had his mentor text internalized, I spent a couple of days of writing time with him trying to help him learn a little bit of basic background about how rap got started, about rap/hip hop as a structure of writing with verses and hooks (choruses), and as a culture. The latter was another reason I felt good about choosing this as a unit; rap introduces him to a culture very different than the one he's grown up in. We watched several interviews with Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator of Hamilton, who W knows about and idolizes more than he ever has any other famous person (W predicts, "There will definitely be a Who Is...? book about him!"). We learned what we could about his creative processes. We watched a few YouTube videos and read a few blog posts dissecting the way rap works in Hamilton. We learned about the importance of rhyming but also the different types of rhyming rappers use, beyond perfect rhyme; this was key.
I was surprised how lucrative my Google search was when I first sat down to gather ideas and resources for this unit. Here were some useful ones:
Resources we used for Our Rap-Writing Unit
- Beats: This lesson included, along with some basic good background information about rap, five different music tracks for students to choose from as beats to go along with their rap. The idea is that they can choose a beat, then write to match it, playing it as they test out their rap.
- More Beats: This link also has around twenty beats to choose from to accompany your rap as you write it or perform it.
- Rap Knowledge/History: Video of DJ Grand Wizard Theodore, inventor of the scratch and needle drop commonly used in rap songs.
- Types of Rhyme: The first page of the rap worksheet included in this lesson (same site as first bullet) was helpful as well, as it gives a list of types of rhyme and other literary devices used in rap.
- Exploring our Mentor Text: Harvard interview where Lin-Manuel Miranda discusses history, hip-hop, and playwriting.
- Exploring our Mentor Text: Compelling, four-minute PBS video comparing Miranda and Shakespeare.
- Exploring our Mentor Text: Informational/analysis video about how rap works in Hamilton. (There are also parts 2 and 3 in this video series if interested.)
- General Teaching Suggestions: I myself used some basic background information to guide our conversations and give suggestions for how to write a rap, like this guidance from a music teacher, and this Flocabulary page, and this how-to, but I didn't force W to strictly follow all the steps or rules from any of these.
- Idea List: I reminded him of a good habit for any type of writing-- keep a list of topic ideas in his notebook to refer to. He has various people and activities, interests and more on this list to go to when he's not sure what to rap about next.
- Dictionaries, Thesauruses, and other Tools: He often has his dictionary and/or thesaurus handy (interestingly, I bought the kids' thesaurus before this school year began, but it was in writing rap that he has really used it and appreciated it). I also found this online rhyming dictionary. I never knew such a thing existed, but it's really neat: you type in a word and get a list of words that rhyme and almost rhyme. I think it actually slows W down to use it and he prefers to think up his own wording and rhymes, but occasionally, as when he was trying to rhyme with pirate, it's a good tool to know about.
After a couple days of digging in and getting to know rap/hip hop, he was itching to go, so I let him leap in and try his hand at it. He's been having a lot of fun with it. In the first couple weeks, he rapped a tribute to our dog for his birthday, wrote a rap for his aunt in her birthday card, he rapped about quarantine, the Revolutionary War, Ulysses S. Grant, and about the characters of one of his favorite novels (Ranger's Apprentice).
Planning and Process
I've learned to talk very little at the start of a writing period, then let W go and give him plenty of space. Occasionally I check in on him, and he is super focused, tapping and clapping and whisper rapping to himself to test out how his work in progress sounds. He works really hard at the rhymes. He's always loved word play since he was little, including rhyming, so maybe that part comes to him fairly naturally. But inspired by Hamilton songs, and some other things he's read, he plays around often with "near rhymes," words that don't actually rhyme, but the emphasis or vowel sounds are close enough that it works effectively, or with rhyming not with an entire other word but instead with a phrase or with a syllable, or with parts of consecutive words. See these examples, both from the line quoted above from "Alexander Hamilton": the last two syllables of forgotten nearly rhyme with spot in; providence seems to rhyme with impoverished.
For other types of writing, he has come to love drafting on the computer. He is efficient at typing now and it makes it easy to edit and revise at every stage. But I think poetry, which rap essentially is, feels easier to draft on paper, to see it concretely and play around with rhymes without getting bogged down with lots of computer formatting. W felt the same and wanted to draft his raps on paper. Not only that, but interestingly, he feels strongly about writing his raps on blank copy paper. He says lined paper makes him feel limited. He feels more free and open to anything on blank. He writes on the paper, in a way that appears to be prose, filling each line before sweeping back to start the next, and he underlines the words or word parts that rhyme to help them pop out and see the pairs (see example at the end of this post). He says underlining it also makes it simpler for him to read with the right beat and emphasis when he speaks the rap aloud. He has figured out his own creative process that works for him.
I leave him alone unless he asks for help. If I talk to him unsolicited, it generally interrupts his thinking. Not every day is amazing output, but that's being a writer, isn't it? I know it's been a good day when he comes to snack afterward saying, "I want to read this to you." I try to give him really specific feedback in small doses, about what I love, or what I thought worked really well, as well as ideas for polishing or for what's next.
More Rap Inspiration Along the Way
He is more self-driven in this writing unit than I have ever seen him before. I am only helping to maintain the enthusiasm and interest he has at this point. Every day or two or three, as needed, I challenge him to try a certain technique or feed him a little more inspiration to keep him going. We've enjoyed a few other rap songs together. I once heard an author (I can't remember who!) say in an interview that it was key to read a lot, and that whatever author they were currently reading, they tended to temporarily imitate and write in the style of, such was the effect of the writing around them. I have certainly seen this effect on W with the rap we listen to. For a time, he was writing highly amusing little raps full of family humor. One day we listened to the audio of "Gangsta's Paradise" (and this kiddie cover of it, just for fun), and that was the day that the intense rap conveying his serious love for skiing poured out of him (see below). A week or so later, I showed him the Fresh Prince of Bel Air theme song and he was immediately telling stories through rap and including back-and-forth conversations in them. He said just the other day that he feels when we listen to a song just before he writes it gets him really ready and in the zone to create his own rap.
Sharing
Having kids share their writing in an authentic way with a real audience is always important, in showing them their writing has purpose, and as a celebration. As I said, we do writing in the morning and he often shares it with me when he's done, especially if he is pleased with it. But he also often brings his latest to the table at lunch time and stands up to perform it for his dad and sister as well. I love these lunch time raps. While we are not a big or public audience, we are certainly an appreciative one. He's shared his raps as gifts. And, he's so excited about and proud of his rapping that he has not only given me permission, but has been asking me to share here on this blog one of his favorite raps that he wrote, about skiing. I have a photo of it below the way he drafted it, then the same rap typed up, and finally, since rap, like poetry is meant to be heard, I wanted to include a video of him performing his rap...but he wanted to make an audio recording of it instead and use it as the soundtrack to some videos of himself skiing. So that is below as well.
W's Skiing Rap in Draft Form:
W's Skiing Rap, Typed:
I’m smashin’ through the powder on the side of a mountain
An’ my miles per hour nobody wants to be countin’
Hey I’m on a double black diamond
and if you’ll watch me you’ll see that I’m flying
Watchin’ me go down, you’ll also see that gravity’s lyin’
Goin’ through the trees
with the powder to my knees
Any calm or serenity that used to have existed
Is smashed into fragments as my legs work like pistons
The sounds of my edges shreddin’ the hillside
are echoing back like an ocean tide
I’m like the fiercest of banshees,
Setting off miniature avalanches
Hey I’m on a double black diamond,
And if you watch me, you’ll see that I’m flying
I don’t need no groomer,
Without one I’m still an adept zoomer
As I get closer to the bottom of the mountain
Snow is spurting out behind me like a fountain
I flit through the last of the trees
My twin tips looking proudly back on the marks they made on the permafreeze
I hockey stop just right,
Then I’m immersed in a cloud of white
As I hop on the chairlift, I realize that I liked that run.
It really was fun.
W's Skiing Rap, Performed as Soundtrack to this Video:
What's Next for the Rest of this Year in Writing
This rap writing "unit" has emboldened me, more than I already was as a homeschool parent. If I can teach rap, then anyone can teach anything-- by asking and noticing the types of things kids really want to write, doing some research, being flexible and willing to work out the plan as you go, giving support but plenty of space to experiment.
I don't know what's next for us after this in writing! And for the first time in my life as a teacher or homeschool parent, that's a beautiful thing. When rap starts to feel like it is winding down, we will talk about what he's interested in and we'll decide together. Maybe I will help him start his own blog. Maybe he'll write some Lego reviews or write and produce history videos. Maybe he'll write some historical fiction. So little time, so many exciting options for writing for a kid his age. I like seeing him empowered to recognize his interests and help make choices for what he will spend his time on. Whatever genre of writing he does next, I know he will continue to grow and mature as a writer.
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