Hip Hop as Literature. Hip Hop as Life.

Literature is all about words. As students study authors and their works within the high school
English Language Arts curriculum, words become things. Students dissect them. They open them
up so that they bleed meaning. They dance on the paper. They sing so that their voice is heard.
They get placed in pocket sized compartments of ones thoughts and as Maya Angelou once said,
they stick on the walls and even on the clothes of all those who come in contact with them.
Words are in fact, things.
Rhymes with Reason represents the next generation of words. Aligned with the Common Core
State Curriculum, Rhymes with Reason is a lexical experience designed to enhance literacy and
vocabulary acquisition within English Language Arts, History/Social Studies, and Science,
whilst preparing all students for success in college, career, and life by the time they graduate
from high school.
Ah, theres the rub! Life.
Rhymes with Reason works in tandem with the Common Core English Language Arts
framework to give life to words within a real-world context, more specifically, through todays
music. In a typical English Language Arts classroom, students recount stories, including fables,
poetry, fiction, drama, and myths from diverse cultures to determine messages, lessons, and
morals. Rhymes with Reason further enables students to determine context and meaning by using
hip hop as literature to engage students in their understanding of key details in a text. While
literary giants like John Steinbeck and Toni Morrison paint their stories with meaning using
some of the most masterful words in the English language, a few lines from Drake and Kendrick
Lamar are sure to capture this generations attention and garner a more fundamental appreciation
for language in todays society.
So, this is how it works
The Rhymes with Reason vocabulary arsenal boasts over 500 SAT, ACT and Common Core
words that are categorized according to major literary themes within the English Language Arts
Common Core 9th-12th grade curriculum. For example, while studying a unit on Identity and
Culture or evaluating literature within that context, students are exposed to almost 40 vocabulary
words related to that same theme. The teacher introduces a vocabulary word by playing a 20
second (or fewer) excerpt by a popular hip-hop artist that uses the word to convey a message
similar to the theme studied. Since hip hop can be just as complex as a Joseph Conrad novel (and
believe me, thats pretty tricky), students determine the denotative and connotative meaning of
the word while analyzing how the artists diction contributes to the overall theme of the song and
the literary theme as a whole. Students begin to acquire high level vocabulary words minus the
cumbersome and mundane tasks usually associated with vocabulary development.
If life were a class, then Rhymes with Reason becomes the holy grail.

Your students will thank you. Check out the lesson plans and activity/game ideas to use as you
incorporate Rhymes with Reason in your classroom instruction.

Coming Soon