English Language Arts With Taylor Swift- An Exploration of Her Inspiration MS
Join us in this middle school ELA class as we analyze Taylor Swift lyrics, the texts and people that inspired her, and stories with similar themes. Great for aspiring writers, including song writers, lovers of literature, and Swifties!
What's included
1 live meeting
45 mins in-class hours per weekHomework
1-2 hours per week. Learners will be expected to listen to the songs before class, if they have not already. Sometimes they will also need to watch the music videos. They will also have some reading outside of class, that, at it's heaviest, will be about two hours/week.Assessment
Ongoing and informal assessment will occur during every meeting, through interactions and assignments. There will not be any formal tests.Letter Grade
includedCertificate of Completion
Available upon requestClass Experience
US Grade 6 - 8
Beginner - Intermediate Level
Taylor swift has been in the spotlight since the age of sixteen. In the past couple of decades, she had built an empire. She has been named Time's Person of the Year, won fourteen Grammys, forty American Music Awards, thirty-nine Billboard Music Awards, and twenty-three MTV Video Music Awards, and much more. She is an icon, admired by many. As Swifties know, her albums are divided into eras, each with a unique sound and thematic focus. We will dive into each, exploring her songs and their literary influences. Learners will read and analyze the texts that inspired her while looking for their influences in her lyrics. We will also take a biographical approach by considering some the life events that influenced her work. Class will be divided into her eras. Most of the content does not build on previous lessons, meaning learners can join at any time. The eras with building content have been noted below. This class mainly relies on other texts, and will cite Swift's lyrics at times. Learners will be reading what she has read and loved. How exciting! Throughout the eras, we will have novel and poetry studies, as listed below. We will discuss the texts in class and complete various activities in regards to them. We will write at times, and have other activities such as trivia (on Gimkit or Kahoot), but most of the class will consist of preplanned discussion questions to help us think more critically and dive deeper into the literature. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ SCHEDULE: Taylor Swift (2006) Week of September 9: Swift Trivia- How well do you know the pop star? Short Story Study: The Myth of Cupid and Psyche Songs: The Outside Focus: Author's purpose, message, making connections between texts, real people, and oneself. Week of September 16: Study: "The Bass, the River, and Sheila Mant" by W.D. Wetherell Focus: Literature Elements & The Art of Lyrical Storytelling Songs: Tim McGraw, Teardrops on my Guitar, Our Song, Picture to Burn ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Fearless (2008) Literature: Poem- Elizabeth Barrett Browning Sonnet 43, Short Story-The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde Songs: Love Story, The Best Day, Fifteen Focus: Theme- The effects of love (platonic, familial, romantic) on identity- How are we changed by love? Week of September 23: Love Story, Sonnet 43 and Mama Swift, Snow White *bonus if time allows Week of September 30: The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde, Fifteen, It's Nice to Have a Friend, Fearless ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Speak Now (2010) Novel Study (2 weeks): Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine* Learners read outside of class for homework. Focus: Plot Development and Story Elements, Themes of Exploration and Obedience/Expected Behaviors Songs: Enchanted, Haunted, The Story of Us, Mean, Back to December, When Emma Falls in Love Week of October 7: Discuss Chapters 1-15 Week of October 14: Discuss Chapters 16-end, complete novel project in class. Choices include a soundtrack, review, or an analytical essay on one theme in the novel. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Future topics, dates TBD Red (2012) Taylor deemed Red a breakup album, with songs about the end of a romance, but she was also experimenting and beginning her transition to pop. This album is also about healing and support. Poetry Study: Pablo Neruda" "Tonight I Write the Saddest Lines" Short Story: Legend of Achilles Focus: Tone, mood, Symbolism, word choice Songs: Red, OG All Too Well, All Too Well (Taylor's Version), album prologue, State of Grace October 21: Poetry Study October 28: Short Story Study ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ UPCOMING 1989 (2014) “This moment is a reflection of the woods we wandered through and all this love between us glowing through the darkest dark.” -Taylor In this era, Taylor officially rebranded as a pop star, and began to accept that, no matter how hard she tried to maintain a good image and show she truly cared about her fans, the media would try to tarnish her name and people would try to tear her down. She embraced what was said about her and turned it into songs. This album is about self-discovery, love (of course), and becoming an adult in the public eye. Short Story Study: "Rules of the Game" by Amy Tan (discussing the game of life- respect for tradition v. the pursuit of individuality) Songs: Bad Blood, Blank Space, Shake it off, Style, Wildest Dreams, Out of the Woods, Welcome to New York (Symbolic of her transformation) Activities: Study the cinematography in "Bad Blood," ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Reputation (2017) Novel Study (? weeks): A Snake Falls to Earth by Darcie Little Badger Short story: "Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes or "Raymond's Run" by Toni Cade Bambara, "Hearts and Hands" by O. Henry Songs: Look What you Made me do, Are you Ready for it, ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Lover (2019) Literature: Nonfiction article about Roy and Silo, two male penguins that were given an egg another couple could not hatch. They successfully hatched it and raised the chick, named Tango. Songs: Me!, You Need to Calm Down Write: love letters! These don't have to be romantic, Taylor did say this album was a A "love letter to love," after all. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Folklore (2020) Era Novel Study: Peter Pan Songs: Peter (TTPD), Cardigan, Seven Autobiographical Study: "Names/Nombres" by Julia Alvarez Songs: The Last Great American Dynasty, Clara Bow (TTPD) ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Evermore (2020) Novel Study (2 weeks): Coraline- The Graphic Novel Songs: wk 1 Song Study (mood & tone) & Coraline Pre-reading wk 2 Chapters 1-7, Setting, plot development, tone, mood, wk 3 Chapters 8-13, Conflict, climax, theme ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Midnights (2022) Independent Study: Learners will research the myth of King Midas and create a presentation on it. Each learner will have a different question to answer in regards to the myth. Songs: "Bigger Than The Whole Sky" Activity: Presentation & write two paragraphs, one to summarize the story, another to answer the given question. Short Story: "Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorne History: Salem Witch Trials Songs: Out of the Woods (1989), Willow (Evermore, what if the 90s trend line was in reference to the 1690s and the Salem Witch Trials?), I did Something Bad (reputation), Mad Woman (Folklore)... I know, the songs are from everywhere but Midnights, this just seemed like a fitting place for it. Songs: Dear Reader Activity: Write an opening to a story where you begin with one character directly addressing the audience, and then switch to first person without the direct address, only bringing it back at the end of the story. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Tortured Poet's Department (2024) Era (I have a bit of analysis and listening to do since this was just released and is a MASSIVE album, so this may change. I am really just getting some ideas out here and will get feedback from learners before finalizing these plans.) Literature Study: The Thing About Cassandra by Neil Gaiman Songs: Cassandra Novel Study: A Wrinkle in Time Songs: So High School Short Story Narrative Study: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Songs: The Albatross Poetry Study: Wild Nights – Wild Nights!, Poem by Emily Dickinson Song: My Boy Only Breaks His Favourite Toys Novel Study: Little Women Song: The Manuscript
Learning Goals
Learners will explore how literature and texts have influenced Taylor Swift’s music, analyzing the connections between her lyrics and the themes, characters, and settings found in the original texts.
Learners will be able to read and interpret the themes, emotions, and storytelling elements in selected Taylor Swift lyrics and selected texts, recognizing how these elements contribute to the narrative.
Other Details
Learning Needs
Through my teaching experience, I have worked with autistic learners, as well as those with ADHD and Dyslexia in an academic setting. I try my best to meet learners where they are by scaffolding- providing supports and room for growth.
Parental Guidance
Some of the literature and media viewed and discussed may have curse words. Parental discussion is always advised. Please listen to the songs beforehand, and check Common Sense Media for literature reviews from other parents and learners.
At times, learners may access a third party platform: Google Docs, gimkit.com/join, and/or Kahoot.it. They do not need an account for Gimkit nor Kahoot. I will give them a code to join our specific game. They will need to join on a different internet tab than the tab they have Outschool or Zoom on, or can join on another device.
For Google Docs, when we have writing assignments, each learner will be expected to provide me with a link to their Doc, where they will complete all of their work, so I can view it and provide feedback as needed.
Supply List
Most of the texts are public domain. Audiobooks are available on YouTube, Ebooks on Project Gutenberg, and hard copies of your choice are available for purchase. Accounts are not needed to access them. Links and/or PDFs will be shared in the classroom when possible. Posts will be made when not possible, letting grown ups know that a purchase or other form of access will be needed.
Teacher expertise and credentials
Texas Teaching Certificate in English/Language Arts
Master's Degree in Education from University of Texas of the Permian Basin
I am certified to teach grades 7-12 (middle and high school level) English/Language Arts in the state of Texas. I also hold a Bachelor's in Maritime Studies (anthropology), with minors in English and Archeology, and a Master's in Education.
Reviews
Live Group Class
$17
weekly1x per week
45 min
Live video meetings
Ages: 11-14
2-8 learners per class