Instruct students to bring their favorite rap music CDs to class. Set up a CD player to play these examples. Ask a few students to choose a song from their CD to play, and then hold a classroom discussion about the lyrics involved. Ask students to think about how rap artists are also writers.
Hand out a packet of poetry to students. Choose poems that are lyrical in nature. It's good to include some young, modern poets who are contemporaries of rappers.
Facilitate an out-loud reading of the poems in the packet. After each poem, ask students to contrast the poetry to the rap lyrics they listened to.
Provide the lyrics to a single rap song that was written by the artist. Help students conduct a deeper discussion about the lyrics, the writing talent of the rapper and the meaning of the song. Read the lyrics like a poem and ask students to consider how that reading relates to earlier poetry readings.
Divide your class into groups and assign each group a poem to rap. Instruct them to consider the cadence of the poem and how it translates to rap music, how the rhythm affects the meaning of the poem and whether setting the poem to music changes how it is enjoyed.