This activity book can be found at the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Civil Rights Memorial Center. Produced for grades 6-8, this book would serve as a great companion to the civil rights curricula typically taught in schools. In the book there is a combination of activities that educate students about the many different people involved in the movement and the major events along the way, that engage students in creative reflection about the events, and that encourage students to take the messages of the movement and make them meaningful in their own lives. For instance, there is one activity that has students create poems, in the style of protest songs, about an issue in their own communities; another has students considering the ways that the movement may have impacted their own lives; another asks them to consider how the consequences of their actions can ripple out to effect other people. Besides the more reflective activities, the book also might introduce students to names of foot soldiers and leaders they would otherwise be unfamiliar with, and to understand the human element behind a major historical movement.
Using this book in conjunction with typical school curricula about race and the history of the Civil Rights Movement would bolster a unit that, in many schools, is lacking. Lessons about this movement, and about race in general, are often relegated to a separate unit, or month, in a way that makes students think that it is irrelevant to their lives. However, in having students think more personally and critically about this piece of history, this book encourages them to think of it not as a moment but as a stage in an ongoing movement. Teachers, of course, have to be sure that the type of reflection that this book encourages appears throughout their lessons, and that it is paired with more explicit and educational discussion of race through history. This book is not intended to stand alone, but instead to deepen the knowledge that students have about this activist movement and about activist movements in general.
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