Lesson Plan

Photo of a scene from the play A Raisin in the Sun . From left-Ruby Dee (Ruth Younger), Lena Younger (Claudia McNeil), Glynn Turman (Travis Younger), Sidney Poitier (Walter Younger) and John Fielder (Karl Lindner). All shown except Turman reprised their roles in the 1961 film version.

Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun provides a compelling and honest look into one family's aspiration to move to another Chicago neighborhood and the thunderous crash of a reality that African Americans faced when attempting to do so. A critical reading of A Raisin in the Sun offers students many opportunities to evaluate the shifting meaning of and access to what has been constructed as "The American Dream" in U.S. history and culture.

This interdisciplinary lesson includes a critical reading and analysis of the play, close examination of biographical and historical documents produced at different times during the long civil rights movement, and assessment options that provide students with opportunities to produce new scenes in graphic or comic form, a newly imagined script based on primary source research, a soundtrack for the play, and annotated maps that bridge the past and the present.