Author: cstein2

Rosa Parks (1913-2005)

This activity can be used during a unit on the Civil Rights movement, in teaching about protests and civil disobedience, or when focusing on Rosa Parks individually. Grades 5-8.

TEKS: 5th Social Studies.
113.16.b.5.C. The student understands important issues, events, and individuals in the US during the 20th and 21st centuries. The student is expected to identify accomplishments of individuals and groups such as Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr…who have made contributions to society in the areas of Civil Rights, women’s rights, military actions, and politics.
Title-Diagram of the Bus Showing Where Rosa Parks Was Seated

Author– National Archives Experience/Docs Teach. http://docsteach.org/activities/3616/detail
Summary
This diagram shows where Rosa Parks was seated on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus on December 1, 1955. At that time, the front 10 seats of the Montgomery city buses were permanently reserved for white passengers. Parks was seated in the first row behind those 10 seats. When the bus became crowded, the bus driver instructed Parks and the other three passengers seated in that row, all African Americans, to vacate their seats for the white passengers boarding. Eventually, three of the passengers moved, while Parks remained seated. When Parks disobeyed the bus driver’s request to move, he called the police.
Her arrest became a rallying point around which the African American community organized a bus boycott in protest of the discrimination they had endured for years. Martin Luther King, Jr., the 26-year-old minister of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, emerged as a leader during the well-coordinated, peaceful boycott that lasted 381 days and captured the world’s attention. It was during the boycott that Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., first achieved national fame as the public became acquainted with his powerful oratory.
This diagram shows where Rosa Parks was sitting when she refused to give up her seat. It was an exhibit in the Browder v. Gayle court case which challenged Montgomery and Alabama laws requiring segregated seating on buses. On June 5, 1956, a Federal three-judge panel ruled that such laws violated the 14th Amendment. Later that year, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the decision.
Synopsis of Lesson & Strategies

In this activity, students will examine a diagram of the bus in which Rosa Parks took a seat. Ms. Parks’ name has been blacked out. Students will analyze and evaluate the document, then apply prior knowledge to discern what this document is and why it is important.
The instructional strategy of Turn & Talk with a partner could be used to decipher the image, based on student’s prior knowledge about the civil rights movement. I chose this strategy because it would be great way to make connections and infer meaning from text. The teacher could ask students to: “Look carefully at this document. Its part of a famous story, but an important clue has been blacked out. Use every bit of information contained here to describe what you see. Then, apply your knowledge of history to figure out what this document is and whom the story is about.”
As an extension of this lesson, students could use a WTL activity by inferring or imagining themselves as Rosa Parks and write about what they might have been thinking during the conflict and how they might have felt.
Companion Book
Parks, Rosa. Dear Mrs. Parks: A Dialogue with Today’s Youth.
In this collection of children’s letters and her responses, Rosa Parks shares her legacy of courage and wisdom, reminding young readers that their actions will determine the future. Dear Mrs. Parks is a moving commentary on our times, full of hope for the future.

Schoolhouse Rock: Counting by Fives

Schoolhouse Rock is a educational series first produced in the 1970’s. They are short animated videos set to catchy music that have inspired generations of kids to learn math, history, grammar, science, economics and civics. Schoolhouse Rock endeavored to teach kids content during the Saturday morning cartoon line up on the ABC network. The series taught an entire generation of kids that “Knowledge is Power,” and today they still are used to inspire learning threw engagement and repetition.

In 2009 Schoolhouse Rock created an entire new series reflecting recent current events called Earth Rock, which will continue to inspire the next generations of kids to learn about recycling, global warming, and energy. Many of the videos are available for free access on You tube and Teacher Tube or the 30th Anniversary collection can be purchased on Amazon.
I choose to post the Schoolhouse rock video Counting by fives, because it is one of my favorites. It is part of the math series which I remember from my childhood. Along with impatiently waiting for the clips to air when I was watching cartoons as a child, my parents bought me the record Multiplication Rock. I would spend hours listening, singing, and dancing around to the record, not realizing that I was learning my multiplication tables at the same time. As scratched and warped as this record is today, it is so loved that 35 years later I still own it! Recently I bought the entire series on DVD so I can share the fun and magic with the future students in my own classroom.

My 10 year old niece was recently visiting me in Texas from Minnesota. As she was rummaging through my videos she came across the Schoolhouse Rock DVD, across the house I could hear her squeals of delight as she came running to me exclaiming, “Auntie can we watch this video? I love these, my teacher uses these. I love the math and conjunction ones!” She sat (directly in front of the TV) singing while automatically remembering the words to many of the songs. When the Counting by Fives video ended she told me that when she plays hide and go seek outside with her friends, she convinces them to count by twos, fives or tens as they all scurry to find hiding places. It is inspiring to find a resource that kids not only can be prompted to learn by, but a resource that they are motivated to use in their daily lives.

Web comments about Schoolhouse Rock:
“When My son was in College in a Business English class, the Professor asked the class what an Interjection was……silence! Leave it to my son; he started singing the Schoolhouse Rock jingle of Interjections! He proudly told me as I am writing this, “I got it right!” with a smile in his voice. He also said he was embarrassed, but he was the only one that got it right!”-Kathy Pukeko (home school teacher).

“I recently picked up the Schoolhouse Rock! retrospective DVD for my five year old and we got hooked into watching all 46 lessons. Beyond being hit by a nostalgic blast from the past, I was struck by how, after all these years, I instantly remembered all the songs and was able to sing along. But what really blew me away was the shows effect on my son. He was completely riveted and now, after watching just a couple of times, he walks around singing his times tables, telling everyone how the nervous system works, and reciting the preamble to the Constitution.”- Inspired Parent

“One idea to try with your students is to let them watch a particular video three or four times. For example, when my third graders were learning their times tables, they used the “Three Is a Magic Number” to help them out. I divided them into groups and let them come up with a routine to the song, and they made “music videos” to go with each song, which I recorded with my flip camera. They did an awesome job, not to mention mastered their three’s times tables!” -Kelly Hines 3rd grade teacher from NC.

Kenn Nesbitt

Having trouble seeing slides? Please view in full screen.

KENN NESBITT is possibly the funniest and most sought-after children’s poet writer today. When he’s not writing, podcasting, updating his website (poetry4kids.com), he is visiting schools sharing his wacky brand of humor with kids across America. He loves to create poetry about wild and weird school adventures that all children can personally relate with.  His off the wall humor is bound to make any student a fan of Language Arts!

I have specifically included some of his poetry about science topics you can use to introduce and integrate new content into your classroom. As an extra bonus the slides also have a quick science experiment about germs that can accompany his poetry. ENJOY!

So B. It- Sarah Weeks

Snippet- 8/31
Language Arts
So B. It by Sarah Weeks (2004)

2007 William Allen White Children’s Award
Reading Selection:
You couldn’t really tell about Mama’s brain just from looking at her, but it was obvious as soon as she spoke. She had a very high voice, like a little girl, and she only knew twenty-three words. I know this for a fact, because we kept a list of the things Mama said tacked to the inside of the kitchen cabinet. Most of the words were common ones, like good and more and hot, but there was one word only my mother said, soof.
“What do you think it means when she says it?” I would ask Bernadette.
“Only you mama knows that,” she’d tell me each time I asked.
That word, soof, became like a little burr sticking in my head, pricking me so I couldn’t forget it was there. I found myself thinking about it more and more.
“There must b e some way to find out what it means,” I’d say to Bernie.
“Not necessarily, Heidi.”
“Well, it has to mean something or Mama wouldn’t say it. She knows what it means.”
“Maybe so, but that doesn’t mean that you ever will. Believe me, Heidi, there are some things in life a person just can’t know.”
The thing is, I didn’t believe her, and a lot was going to have to happen before I would.
Why I picked selection:
I chose this book for many different reasons. First I liked that it has a main character that is mentally challenged. I am always looking for books for my classroom library that has physically or mentally challenged persons in them because I know that I will have these students in my inclusive classroom and I want my students to be exposed to literature that mirrors our class. I also liked that the main character, Heidi, is a 12 year old girl who is also the breadwinner in her family, and a courageous girl who sets off on an independent adventure all by herself to solve the mystery of the word soof. I hope that this text will empower girls.
This is a 5th/6th grade level book.