- Set aside your normal reading lessons for a week or two and concentrate on classic works by black authors. For older students, read some poems by Maya Angelou and discuss how her life and writings have impacted America. Julius Lester is an author who has written several children's books, including picture books. Read your students his classic picture book "John Henry" or his non-fiction book "Let's Talk About Race." Alternately, perform a reader's theater.
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Immerse older students in Black History Month by having them choose figures about whom to write biographies. Provide a list of names or let the students find their own figures--but make sure you don't have a lot of students writing about the same person. Give them two weeks to write the biography, then have each student share his or her biography in class.
For younger students, read aloud a collection of short biographies geared towards a younger age group, then brainstorm a list of things they've learned about each person. Write the lists on butcher paper, then let a group of students illustrate it and hang it on the classroom walls. - Although Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday is celebrated in January, Black History Month is the perfect time to dig deeply into how his works changed the course of our country's history. Use this opportunity to focus on what the United States would be like right now in the absence of his influence during the civil rights movement. Create a time line of his life by stretching a string or yarn across the classroom. Attach an index card to one end of the yarn with his birth date on it. Then divide the students into groups. Give each group a time period of 10 to 15 years and some index cards. Their job is to find important events in Martin Luther King Jr.'s life and record them on the cards. As each group shares the events they find, attach the index cards to the string.
