The intense, condensed language of poetry distills the essentials of a person's experience and emotion to convey truths and impressions that are difficult to express in prose. The Harlem Renaissance movement in the 1920s produced well-known black poet Langston Hughes, whose poetry is a powerful expression of what it was like to be black in America at that time. The poems of award-winning poet Maya Angelou are another choice during a black history unit. Read the poems together and discuss the imagery and emotions that the poet is conveying. Have children draw pictures of the images and ideas that the poet expresses through his poetry.
Libraries are a valuable resource for locating easy-to-read biographies of important figures in black history. Some names to look for include, Crispus Attucks, Sojourner Truth, Benjamin Banneker, Jesse Owens, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, James Baldwin, Rosa Parks, Ella Fitzgerald, Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, Thurgood Marshall, Shirley Chisholm, Aaron Douglas, W.E.B. DuBois, Mae Jemison, James Earl Jones, Scott Joplin and Jackie Robinson. Read several biographies aloud for the whole class and have each student choose one or two to read alone. Ask each child to write a few sentences or a short paragraph about her chosen historical figure and the important things this person did. Have him draw a picture to go with it.
Folktales tell a great deal about the values and traditions that a culture passes on. When slave traders captured Africans and brought them to American slave markets, they brought their stories with them, many of which became entwined with American folklore, such as the Brer Rabbit tales. Do shared readings of titles such as, "How the Ostrich Got Its Long Neck" by Verna Aardema, "A Story, A Story" by Gail Haley, "Monkey-Monkey's Trick" by Patricia McKissack," Why the Sky Is Far Away" retold by Mary Joan Gerson or "The People Could Fly" by Virginia Hamilton. Reading responses range from creating animal puppets, graphing the animal characters, researching the types of animals in the stories, creating model habitats, creating story murals, or writing original stories in the style of the African folktales.
A story quilt makes a fun way for children to summarize what they've learned about black history. The quilt serves as a tangible reminder of the importance of remembering the struggles that blacks have overcome to enjoy the same freedoms as all Americans. Assign each child a person or event in black history such as the Amistad, the Emancipation Proclamation and abolition, Jim Crow laws, Jackie Robinson, Jesse Owens, Brown vs. the Board of Education, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King or Barack Obama. Ask each child to read about his assigned person or event, or brainstorm what the class learned about each from read aloud activities. Give each child a blank quilt square and fabric pens, markers or felt scraps, scissors and glue. Instruct each child to create an image on the quilt square that represents the important things to remember about this person or event. Collect the quilt squares and sew the quilt squares together. Add padding and a backing and return it to the class for display. If quilting is not your forte, ask for a parent volunteer to finish the quilt for the class.