Black History: Lesson Plans: Grades K-5

Students in grades 3-5 learn about 10 African Americans whose innovations improved transportation, health care, fashion, and lunch.

Students in grades K-4 are introduced to jazz dance and jazz music, explore basic jazz dance movements, and create a cinquain poem inspired by jazz.

Students in grades K-4 listen to jazz audio clips to learn to identify styles and musicians associated with the Harlem Renaissance.

The National Museum of African American History and Culture is the only national museum devoted exclusively to the documentation of African American life, history, and culture. The educator’s page of the NMAAHC website includes lessons in art and science as well as history and culture. Each lesson lists curriculum connections.

In this Jeopardy-type quiz game students in grades 5-12 can choose from three levels of difficulty to test their knowledge of famous African Americans. Spelling counts, for example Billy Holiday rather than Billie Holiday would be marked incorrect.

Brimming with comprehensive, cross-curricular content, including 14 videos, primary source images and documents, compelling photo galleries, interactive maps, artwork, music, and more, this virtual collection invites students (K-8) into an engaging exploration of some of the most significant events of the Civil Rights Movement.

Images, documents, stories, biographies, and commentaries. The site provides teacher’s and youth guides. The four part series may be in local libraries.

Biographies, timelines, photos, video, game, quiz, and 101 fast facts.

Resources covering art and design, baseball, civil rights, culture, folklife, military, music and performing arts, religion, slavery, and resource guides.

Lessons and links on the life histories of people whose struggle was part of a larger social and economic movement to improve the lives of the working class.

BlackPast is dedicated to providing reliable information on the history of Black people across the globe, and especially in North America. It is the largest online encyclopedia on African American and Global African history on the Internet and includes information on Black institutions, events, people, organizations, places, primary documents, and more.

Investigate the contributions African Americans have made in the history and cultural development of the United States.

History, images, and other resources covering the historic Supreme Court ruling ending segregation and ensuring opportunity in education.

Includes digital materials related to W. E .B. Du Bois and links to external websites.

In this set of four lessons, students examine works by African American painter William H. Johnson to learn about his milieu as well as his style. Younger students list the elements of the pictures, identifying colors and shapes and such objects as farm equipment, crops, and animals.

A collection of interviews from National Public Radio (NPR) that chronicle the seminal people and events in the 50 years since the founding of the hip-hop movement.

Online activities and biographies, transcripts of many interviews with musicians, K-12 lesson plans, and a music study guide for grades 5-8.

Students look at both African American history and the history of portraiture in this set of four lessons. Portrait subjects include Sojourner Truth, Mohammed Ali, Ella Fitzgerald, and Leontyne Price. The youngest students make their own photographic “calling cards.” Older students do research on the portrait subjects.

Poems and articles by African-Americans.

Links from the Library of Congress.

In this set of four lessons, students examine photographic portraits and biographies to learn about the history of African Americans in the field of aviation. They portray the aviators in drawing, painting, or writing.

Brief biographies and film clips of outstanding African American athletes. Don’t miss the links to legal and political figures, scientists and educators, activists, artists and writers, entertainers, and musicians and singers.