The Fire Next Time Lesson Plan

The Fire THIS Time

Kind of Activity:

Long-term Project

Objective:

Students will be able to draw connections between historic and contemporary moments of social and political unrest and better understand the makings of uprisings

Common Core Standards:

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.4; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.7

Structure:

This assignment will require students to reflect on the book's title, The Fire Next Time, and consider what the Fire This Time looks like. Baldwin's book has been lauded as a cautionary work that foreshadowed many of the uprisings (often described as race riots) of the 1960s.

Fire becomes a metaphor to describe a destructive chaos that will fall upon our...