Key and Peele

Key and Peele (abbreviated to K&P) is an American sketch comedy television series created by Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele that aired on Comedy Central. Although they originally aimed to explore themes related to masculinity, their sketches on racism went viral and eventually won them 2 Emmy awards. This body of work may provide you with useful material for your individual oral or HL Essay. 

Key and Peele Sketches
  1. Get into pairs. Assign each group one of the sketches from the body of work (see Google Slides above). With your classmate, explore your answers to the questions from the worksheet below in relation to your video. Show your sketch to your classmates and lead a discussion on your group’s sketch with the class, exploring everyone's answers to the questions from the worksheet.

  2. Worksheet: Key and Peele

  3. After discussing your class's videos, watch the rest of the videos from the body of work. As a class, create a list of verbal phrases that describe the purposes of their sketches. Go beyond phrases such as 'to entertain'.

  4. Create a Google Doc as a class where each one in your class shares a link to a secondary source about Key and Peele. Explain to your classmates your answers to these 3 questions:

    • What is the purpose of your secondary source?
    • How does it shed light on the videos that you've seen already and make you see them differently?
    • How relevant or significant is your source to previous discussions that you've had as a class on these videos?

  5. Explore the page on writing a line of inquiry for the HL Essay. Create another Google Doc, in which each person in your class writes a line of inquiry on Key and Peele and their sketches. Compare and contrast everyone's line of inquiry. Where do you see commonalities? Which concepts are prevalent in these lines of inquiry: transformation, perspective, culture, communication, identity, creativity and representation.

Assessment

Key and Peele, as a body of work, provide a good point of departure for an HL Essay or an individual oral. The HL Essay asks how a BOW explores a 'topic'. The individual oral ask how authors of a BOW and literary work explore a global issue. How would you define the 'topics' and 'global issues' in these sketches? Make a list of issues as a class and find examples from 2-3 sketches to support K&P's stance on this issue. You now have the beginnings of an IO or HLE.

Last modified: Tuesday, 22 February 2022, 7:49 AM