Are you looking for meaningful ways to engage your students in Black History Month? As elementary teachers we found it can be hard to find resources that are age appropriate, engaging, and purposeful.
We have made it easy for all of the tired teachers out there with ready to print reading comprehension workbooks, a PowerPoint presentation, vibrant vocabulary cards, detailed lesson plans and SO MUCH more! Take a look below to see what is included in our week-long Discovering Rosa Parks Unit, also available as a digital resource here.
What’s included in this Rosa Parks Research Unit?
- Ready for you lesson plans
- Student reading comprehension booklet
- Informational PowerPoint
- Printable vocabulary puzzles and activities
- Graphic organizers & writing papers
- Early finisher activities including: word search, cross word, and ABC ordering.
- SMART Art Writing Activity
How to use these in your classroom
Begin the unit by engaging your class with a colorful PowerPoint presentation to grab their attention and get them thinking. Next, you can easily move into a group discussion by using the open-ended question at the end of the presentation. Combined with the anchor chart, this is a great chance to let students demonstrate their knowledge about Rosa Parks.
Print and laminate the vocabulary cards and display them on your word wall or bulletin board for students to reference throughout the unit. Use the vocabulary flipbook and puzzle to give students the chance to practice each of the new vocabulary words.
To practice reading comprehension, have students work through the Research Booklet. As they read about Rosa Park’s life and legacy, they’ll answer comprehension questions at the bottom of each page.
This is also a great time to include a supplemental text. We like to read aloud a book about Rosa Parks to go over reading comprehension skills before we have the students start on the Research Booklet. Rosa’s Bus: The Ride to Civil Rights is one of our favorites!
After finishing the reading booklet, give students to chance to demonstrate their new knowledge. Either as an independent or whole group activity, have students complete the graphic organizer. Next, they’ll use this as a reference to create a longer writing piece.
You can choose to use the supplemental pages as early finisher work for students after they finish their writing or as activities to do throughout the unit. We love using them for morning work and homework as well. Activities include ABC order, a crossword puzzle, acrostic poem, and word search.
After working through the research unit, you can use our Rosa Parks BOOM Cards Deck to assess your students’ comprehension and knowledge. We love using BOOM Cards since they are self checking and give the students instant feedback while saving you time spent marking their work!
In addition to learning about Rosa Parks, we have activities to help your students learn more about Martin Luther King, Jr. Check out our blog post here for more ideas!
