Black History: Lesson Plans: Grades 9-12

In this lesson, students will practice writing, listening and discussion skills as they learn about "code switching" — who does it, when, where and why they do it and how it is problematic when it reinforces discrimination.

Students in grades 9-12 analyze jazz music, considering sound, rhythm, and improvisation in order to identify jazz characteristics in poems by Yusef Komunyakaa, Sonia Sanchez, and Langston Hughes. They will then incorporate the elements in their own poetry.

Integrating African-American Culture & History into Your Curriculum

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.

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.

Learn about the impact African American and Black people from across the globe have had on air and space.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Students learn the structure of the blues stanza—both in music and in the blues-based poems of Langston Hughes—in this set of four lessons. Younger students compose their own three-line blues poems. Older students listen for details of the Great Migration in recordings of rural and urban blues from Smithsonian Folkways.

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.

This four part audio series explores the history of the blues.