Lesson Plan

Home Instruction Handouts Resources


IMPLEMENTATION - DAY TO DAY LESSON PLANS

The following lessons and activities are designed to help students better understand what motivated individuals to join a movement for social justice. Students will work with images and words that provide both insight into what motivated people to join the movement and the challenges they faced as they developed strategies to push the movement forward. Providing students an historical context and chronology of this time and place will help them better understand these words and image. One source, among many, that can help provide this context is your U.S. History textbook, The Americans, chapter 21 (pages 695-719. If you are adapting this unit to an American Government class chapter 21 (544-561) in Macgruder’s American Government provides a source for both historical and thematic context.

Our suggestion for using the U.S. History textbook is to have students read the chapter to get a sense of chronology and how the movement changed and evolved. One possibility is to have students, using material from the textbook and information learned in this unit, add additional events and individuals to the timeline on pages 694-695. Adding graphics and quotes to help explain these additions will help students illustrate their understanding of these significant events and individuals.

The American Government text does not include a chronology, but a timeline of important court cases and an events connected to the struggle for civil rights can be constructed from material in chapter 21.
We suggest that the textbook reading be assigned and completed before they do websearching and group projects. We have put discussion of the textbook, or other readings that you to provide context, and the chronologies, on day 6.

Steps

Class time

Activity/instructions

Materials/links

1 1 class period Students write response to 1st prompt and then discuss their responses in small or large group discussion. - 1st writing prompt
handout #1.pdf
2 1-2 class periods Have students 1st watch and then, on a second time through, respond to powerpoint presentation on the Civil Rights movement.
Ask to note in the space provided for each slide (handout #2) what issues, people, ideas, challenges, and/or strategies are highlighted in each slide.
- powerpoint presentation
- note form handout of presentation 3 slides per page
handout #2.pdf
3 1 class period Have students watch and listen to the last portion of the "I’ve Been to the Mountaintop" speech.
Have students read extended excerpts from the speech and complete handout #3a
-audio of speech
- video tape excerpt
- questions on video and speech
handout#3.pdf
4 1 class period Birmingham (1963) and passage from "Mountaintop" speech. (Handout #4) At this point students should speculate, based on previous knowledge, on the connections between the phrase and the individuals and events of the civil rights movement. They will return to this same question as part of the assessment for this unit.

Move to discussion about what King meant by "there was a certain kind of fire no water could put out." Use t-chart (Handout #4) to students explore, metaphorically, their own "fires, the "waters" that get poured on them, and what strategies might be used to keep the "fires" alive and to overcome the "waters".
- audio of passage from speech
- transparency or link to page with photo, passage, and question (handout #4)
- T-chart
handout #4.pdf
5
6 2 class periods Websearching – students will begin to explore websites that contain materials connected to the study of the civil rights movement and complete preliminary research activity
7 2-3 class periods Group project – "Researching Personal Stories of Liberation from the Civil Rights Movement" - handout – project assignment
handout #6.pdf
Website Links
8 1-2 class periods Group presentations and discussion Presentation guidelines (handout #7)
9 1 class period Unit quiz handout #8.pdf
10 2 class periods Students write culminating essay in response to final writing prompt Writing prompt
handout #9.pdf