PBS
Breaking the Code: Actions and Songs of Protest
Ezell Blair, Jr., David Richmond, Franklin McCain and Joseph McNeil changed history. Their sit-in at the lunch counter of the Woolworths in Greensboro, North Carolina on February 1, 1960 became a model for the nonviolent protests that...
Curated OER
Language Arts, Music, Poetry: Blues Style
This lesson focuses on how the blues both operates as poetry and informs the poetry of many prominent African American poets. Students consider the poetic devices and recurring themes in blues lyrics and the significance of the poetry of...
CHPCS
The United States in the 1920s: The New Negro Movement and the Harlem Renaissance
Music, writing, and activism all tell the story of history! The resource uses these elements and more in a presentation to discuss the Jazz Age and Harlem Renaissance. Your class views biographies, discusses important events, and...
Curated OER
"ART ZOO 'Blacks in the Westward Movement', 'What Can You Do with a Portrait', and 'Of Beetles, Worms, and Leaves of Grass'"
Students study black history, examine portraits and portrait making and create their own portraits, and investigate their natural environment. This humanities lesson provides a text that can be used to teach lessons in black...
Curated OER
Habari Gani: What is the News?
Display creative works of art after learning about Kwanzaa. Kindergartners hear stories about the history of Kwanzaa and its celebrations. They then create artwork, practice African dances and listen to African music.
Curated OER
American Culture in a Musical Setting
Learners discover the significance of similarities and contrasts of three separate cultures of the United States through music. They take out maps and trace the expedition of the Spanish along the coasts of Mexico and North and South...
Curated OER
English Lesson Plan on Barack Obama
For this English worksheet, students read about Barack Obama. Students engage in a variety of reading and listening comprehension activities related to the article on Barack Obama.
PBS
The Harlem Renaissance
A reading of Walter Dean Myers' "Harlem" sets the stage for studying the literature, art, and music of the Harlem Renaissance. The lesson begins with a review of the social, political, and economic conditions of the 1920s and 1930s that...
Core Knowledge Foundation
Unit 6: The Genius of the Harlem Renaissance Teacher Guide
Introduce your seventh graders to the Harlem Renaissance with a unit that explores this dynamic period's music, literature, and ideas. The 160-page guide includes a unit calendar, an introduction to the unit, 10 richly detailed lessons...
National Park Service
Lesson 1: Journaling with Songs of Freedom
There's more to music than a memorable tune. The songs of those who were enslaved reveal the harsh realities of their lives. Using both songs and slave narratives, historians uncover this hidden history. The lesson incorporates a variety...
National Park Service
Lesson 2: Hope
There's hope in music. Pupils discover what gave enslaved people hope by examining lyrics and music during their time of bondage. A series of prompts helps individuals investigate songs of enslaved people. The cumulative assignment...
Annenberg Foundation
Masculine Heroes
What were the driving forces behind American expansion in the nineteenth century, and what were its effects? Scholars watch a video, read biographies, engage in discussion, write journals and poetry, draw, and create a multimedia...
Curated OER
Photographs of the 369th Infantry and African Americans during World War I
Students engage in a discussion regarding images of war we see, how quickly do we see them, and how they affect us? They view and analyze war photographs taken during World War I.
Core Knowledge Foundation
Ray Charles
Introduce young learners to the read-aloud process with a short biographical passage about Ray Charles. After listening to the passage, class members respond to factual, inferential, and evaluative questions, and then create a timeline...
Curated OER
Music and Art of the Harlem Renaissance
The music of the Harlem Renaissance can provide a way for students to learn about musicians like Dizzy Gillespie and Louis Armstrong.
Curated OER
"Jazz is About Freedom": Billie Holiday's Anti-lynching Song Strange Fruit
Working in small teams, learners analyze a variety of primary source materials related to lynching (news articles, letters written to or written by prominent Americans, pamphlets, broadsides, etc.) in order to assess the effectiveness of...
Smithsonian Institution
The Vocal Blues: Created in the Deep South of the U.S.
Bring the sounds of the deep South vocal blues to the classroom with a Smithsonian Folkways lesson. In preparation, scholars listen to and count the 12 bar blues patterns in several works and identify the I, II, IV, and V chords as well...
PBS
Hidden Messages in Spirituals
Slaves laboring in the cotton fields of the old South singing joyously may have convinced overseers that their workforce was happy and content, but in truth, these spirituals contained secret codes. After viewing a short video about...
National Park Service
Lesson 4: Escape
Some enslaved people decided to run for their liberation. Using lyrics of songs they sang, young historians look at these anthems of freedom. An assessment asks them to write the story of escape from the perspective of an enslaved...
Curated OER
The Life and Work of Jacob Lawrence
Black History Month provides a time to talk about the accomplishments of African Americans like Jacob Lawrence.
Curated OER
Visualizing Jazz Scenes From the Harlem Renaissance
Students identify themes of selected nonfiction, fiction, poetry and art to Harlem Renaissance jazz and describe the impact of jazz on African-American literature of the Harlem Renaissance
Penguin Books
Up Close: Ella Fitzgerald
A reading of Tanya Lee Stones' biography of Ella Fitzgerald lets middle schoolers get up close and personal with the First Lady of Jazz. Stone recounts details of Fitzgerald's life from her early days through her experiences as a teenage...
Curated OER
Harriet Tubman Integrated Unit: Lesson 3
Students explore African spirituals. In this slavery lesson, students listen to and analyze the spiritual song "Wade in the Water" line by line. Students share their interpretations with their classmates.
Curated OER
Lady Sings the Blues
Young scholars explore women and music in the 20th century. In this music lesson, students study the relationship between literature and music through The Color Purple and music by Ethel Waters, MA Rainey, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday,...