It is important for children to know about the harsh times that lead up to the passing of the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery. Start by accessing the Library of Congress American Memory archives where you can sort through almost seven hours of recorded interviews from former slaves. In these recordings, they talk about their views towards slavery, coercion of slaves, slaveholders, their families and freedom. The interviewees were children at the time they were slaves. Your third graders will gain a better appreciation for learning what a child slave went through over 100 years ago, and how their struggles led to the abolition of slavery. For an exercise, you can have your students write letters to slave children letting them know how their bravery changes the future for African Americans.
When presenting the Thirteenth Amendment, you only need to mention the sections that address slavery. You will want to read sections one and two aloud and break them down into fragments. As an exercise, you can have students interpret the various parts of sections one and two by creating their own posters with colored paper and markers. Tell your students to assume the role of someone from 1865 voting in favor of passing the Thirteenth Amendment, and to create political posters supporting equal rights for African Americans. This physical exercise will help them better relate to the topic and recognize its importance while bringing out their creativity.
Getting kids physically involved in a lesson plan is a great way for them to learn. You can start by telling all the kids with dark eyes to go to one side of the classroom and all the kids with light eyes to go to the opposite end. Tell one group that they get to eat first, have longer recess and receive less homework simply because their eye color is different. Then get your students to express how the exercise made them feel before you introduce the history of racial segregation. Discovery Education advises teachers to have children draw a non-violent solution to segregation with an accompanying poem. After editing your student’s work, you can compile them together into a book and display the work at a classroom open house.
Help children recognize the brave leaders of the civil rights movement by breaking down individual events and important figures. After teaching your students the stories and facts around civil rights, you can use your dry erase board or a PowerPoint presentation to re-create the game show Jeopardy. Simply create categories with columns of blind questions worth points. Title the categories after civil rights leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, W.E.B.DuBois and others. Pair your students into teams and have them take turns in having the opportunity to choose and answer a question. A good "Final Jeopardy" question would be to have them complete a line from Dr. King's “I Have a Dream” speech. A good reward for the winning team could be an extra 15 minutes of recess or a healthy snack.