Black History Month #2

A colleague at my school (4th grade) each year has her classes present the Famous African American Living History Museum. Each student selects a person to research. They write a report on the person's life and accomplishments along with a poster. Then they have a celebration in which they invite parents and some of the classes in the intermediate grades to the media center where the students dress up as the person and give a monologue about themselves. For example, if the person is jackie Robinson, the student will be dressed up in baseball uniform and may have a bat as a prop. They have a short speech that they have memorized taht begins with, Hi, I'm Jackie Robinson, and I'm a famous African American. Then they continue to provide interesting facts and accomplishments about "themselves". They end their speech by restating the first sentence of their monologue. The media center is decorated with all of the posters and reports the students made. I hope I explained this well. It really is an amazing presentation that I look foward to every year.

How about you assign each child a famous black american. They can hold up a picture printed from the internet and recite a small blurb (can be printed on the back of picture) re how they became famous. That way the kids do the research, they compose a paragraph or blurb, but there doesn't have to be any memorization.

This year, my high schoolers are expanding on our idea from last year. We have a powerpoint and a burned CD that documents the "Evolution of African American Music". Kids love it because everyoe loves music. I started with African drumbeats, ragtime, blues, swing, motown, soul, jazz, R&B, hip-hop,and so forth......

Sorry I'm so late replying...

That is a great idea! Since I had like a day to prepare, I did a sort of must through the ages of the Civil Rights Movement. A girl in my class wrote a song in honor of MLK for the 50's, we performed My Girl for the 70's, and I Believe I Can Fly for the 90's. The kids loved it and everyone was complimenting us on our performance.

Next year, I hope to do something more involved like you are suggesting.

Depending on your students age and ability, you could let them draw stamps based on famous people.
After my class did research on people, we talked about how the US postal service honors people with a stamp. I found an 8x11 stamp printable somewhere online and had the students draw a stamp to honor their famous person.
We hung them in the hall and everyone loved them.

I am a librarian at an elementary school. I made the Coolest bulletin board to celebrate black history month. I picked the books, "under the quilt of night", "the secret to freedom", and "the patchwork path". They all have to do with a secret quilt code that the slaves would use to escape to freedom. So i made all the individual quilt patches and handed them out to the 4th and 5th graders and they each colored one and brought them back to me and we made a giant quilt . i hung up the book jackets and a title that said "celebrate black history" and "a quilt map to freedom. It turned out great.

Instead of just inventors, you can do top 10 lists of artists, athletes, politicians, etc. Just about any profession!:)

At my school, the 4th grade does research on one famous African-American, past or present, then make a poster about him or her, complete with pictures, trivia and sometimes even the background reflects the person (a boxing ring for Muhammad Ali, a running track for Jesse Owens, a microphone for Oprah Winfrey, etc.). After giving their oral reports (where they actually dress up as their person), the posters are hung up on the board and the walls in the hall. Everyone loves it!:D

Nicole, you could also print out some famous African Americans on colored construction paper or white paper and let the children color them and cut them out. Staple them on the Bulletin board and let the children find out some information about them (such as when they died, what important things or changes they accomplished), etc., then cut this information out and paste it under the person they chose to discuss.

You could also have find pictures of people (famous or not) and assist with putting them on a bulletin board and discussing their race (chinese, african american, caucasian, etc), talk about their culture (research it), then have a part on the board where they realize.....Regardless of our race, we are all people, and that makes us special.


just some ideas....hope it helps

Hi Nicole,

Last year (my first year)I did a bulletin board titled Africa's Finest. I included portraits of both African(Nelson Mendela, Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah, I can't recall her name but the first woman president of Liberia, Hailee Selasee, etc.) and African-Americans(King, Fannie Lou Hamer, Geroge Washington Carver, Malcolm X, Frederick Douglass,Madame C.J Walker, Carter G. Woodson, etc..) and included a brief bio of each one. I picked about 14. Now, outside of the display, everyday I talked briefly about each of the people featured outside in our display, just in case anyone asked,my kids would have an answer. I also made sure during read aloud, I read books written by african-americans or read something that occured during slavery.I did this for the whole month. This is something I do for every major celebration(women's history month, Puerto Rican Heritage, St. Patrick's Day, Presidents' Day, etc..). I hope I've helped.Good Luck.

While searching for people to research for Black History month I came across this website. www.blackinventor.com I did not have to look anywhere else for people to reseacrh.

Maureen

We read Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech. Then We wrote an essay about our dreams. I have a dream for myself, my family & my school family (our class). They had to write what the dream was and why they had that dream. We will display our works in the cafeteria with other grade levels' projects.