CEFLS: Black History: Lesson Plans: Grades K-5

Lesson Plans

The Civil Rights Movement
Students in grades 3-5 learn about 10 African Americans whose innovations improved transportation, health care, fashion, and lunch.
African American Social Studies Topics
Students in grades K-12 learn about and celebrate the contributions of African American as well as learn more about the Civil Rights Movement and more.
Jazz Music, Dance, and Poetry
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.
Musical Harlem
Students in grades K-4 listen to jazz audio clips to learn to identify styles and musicians associated with the Harlem Renaissance.
NMAAHC Education
The Smithsonian’s newest museum, the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), was established in 2003 and is scheduled to open on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in 2015. 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.

Activities

Notable African Americans from the 18th-century to the present
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.
The Underground Railroad
K-12 students make decisions as they follow Harriet Tubman and escape from a slave owner in this online interactive.

Background Resources

African American History Month Exhibits & Collections
Resources covering art and design, baseball, civil rights, culture, folklife, military, music and performing arts, religion, slavery, and resource guides.
Africans in America
Images, documents, stories, biographies, and commentaries. The site provides teacher’s and youth guides. The four part series may be in local libraries.
Black Labor History
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.
Black History - Biography - Celebrate Black History Month & People
Biographies, timelines, photos, video, game, quiz, and 101 fast facts.
EDSITEment's Guide to African American History and Culture in the United States
Investigate the contributions African Americans have made in the history and cultural development of the United States.
Separate Is Not Equal - Brown v. Board of Education
History, images, and other resources covering the historic Supreme Court ruling ending segregation and ensuring opportunity in education.
W. E. B. Du Bois: Online Resources
Includes digital materials related to W. E .B. Du Bois and links to external websites.

Art

African American Visual Art and the Black Arts Movement
The Black Arts Movement (BAM) began in the mid-1960s to provide a new vision of African Americans. This site provides images galleries a theoretical essay, timeline, and links to other online art sources. Note: the top banner links are dead but the bottom links are functional.
The Art and Life of William H. Johnson
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.
The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed
African American History by region.
The History of Hip-Hop
A collection of interviews from National Public Radio (NPR) that chronicle the seminal people and events in the hip-hop movement.
Jazz: A Film by Ken Burns
Online activities and biographies, transcripts of many interviews with musicians, K-12 lesson plans, and a music study guide for grades 5-8.
Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African American Portraits
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 to Celebrate Black History Month
Poems and articles by African-Americans.

Science

African Americans in Science and Technology
Links from the Library of Congress.
Black Wings: African American Pioneer Aviators
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.

Sport

African American Athletes
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.

David Fuller - Library Computer Specialist

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Links for Kids

Quizzes

Printables

Juvenile DVDs

History I Need to Know: Heroes of Freedom Harriet Tubman and Rosa Parks
Call Number: DVD J923.23 HIS
Written and developed for young viewers, the life and times of Harriet Tubman and Rosa Parks will come alive for children in these live-action programs about two of America's most enduring heroes of freedom. Stirring dramatizations and historically accurate reenactments, photographs and colorful maps help tell their stories.
Wind Flyers
Call Number: DVD JD WIN
ISBN: 9781933938905
Publication Date: 2007
A young African-American boy tells about his great-great-uncle who was 'a wind flyer.' He describes his uncle's lifelong passion for aviation, from his boyhood attempts at flight by jumping off the roof of a chicken coop to his eventual career as a Tuskegee Airman. Uncle reminisces about the brave young Tuskegee wind flyers and occasionally takes the boy on a flight 'into the wind, against the wind, beyond the wind.

Black History: Lesson Plans: Grades K-5

Lesson Plans

Activities

Background Resources

Art

Science

Sport

David Fuller - Library Computer Specialist

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Links for Kids

Quizzes

Printables

Juvenile DVDs