Black History Month is an annual observance originating in the United States, where it is also known as African-American History Month. Every February, people in the United States celebrate the achievements and history of African Americans. Its purpose is to remember important people and events in the history of the African diaspora.
Using out of the box Black History Month activities will ensure that your students will be highly engaged and will learn so much. This year I am taking things one step further and celebrate the entire month with activities meant to empower and teach important lessons.
Do you want to know what I will be using in class? Keep on reading!
1. Black History Month Unit
My students will also dive for the first couple of weeks in a mini unit about Black History Month. I will use paired texts to get them exposed to a large variety of content and activities. In the first day, they will read an informational article about 19th Century: Black People And Photography As A Social Change Tool and answer open ended and multiple choice questions. Next, we will look at the poem I, Too – Langston Hughes, analyze it and create a fun one-pager. Last we will read the short story Thank You, Ma’am by Langston Hughes. Out of all the things I could give them to do, I decided that a story analysis bingo board would be the best choice. My students really love choice boards of all types.
2. Black History Month bell ringers
Each class will start with warm-up activities. This will give my students the opportunity to settle and get in the right mood for the lesson. Therefore, they will do word searches, mini-banners, crafts, crosswords, trivia, color palette poetry and many more. These are the perfect Black History Month activities to raise their interest and to sharped their English skills in a fun manner.
3. Biography mini research project
Because my students love projects, they will team up for a mini research project on the life of a famous black person they will choose. Therefore, I will split them in teams and give them the ready made template and they just need to fill it in. This saved me so much time. All the members of the group will share the load of the project. I’ll give them 10 possible project pages and they have to select at least 5 of them to complete.
4. Black History Month digital escape room
In the last week, we do a fun round-up of all the things we have learned about Black History Month during this week. I will give my students a digital escape room. They will travel through a variety of questions to escape the game. My students are crazy about escape rooms. Everything that is digital and gamified appeals to them in a special way. So I hope that this activity will give this special week the ending it deserves.
5. Poetry Writing
The whole Black History Month will be sprinkled with inspiring poetry writing activities. We will start with blackout poetry inspired by civil rights speeches. The imagination of my students is set on fire and they simply love this activity. I also challenge them with other types of poetry activities, like acrostic poem, book spine poetry, haiku, rewriting poetry or graphic poems.
These are all the Black History Month activities I have planned for this year. I do not want this special month to go away unnoticed. Therefore, I decided to make the most out of it. What are your plans for Black History Month?
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