Bulletin Board for Black History Month
Display Ideas that Teach about African American Roots
Jan 24, 2009
Creating educational bulletin boards in your classroom is just one more way to teach your students. Use these bulletin boards as a way to introduce, reinforce and support lessons. They will be especially helpful for visual learners if you point them out and refer to the information as you teach. This way the students will be able to have a constant visual reminder of the information.
Display Prominent African Americans
Display a picture of several different famous African Americans. You can either place an index card with pertinent information relating to the person on the bulletin board from the start, add the information as you discuss each person, or have the students work together to add the information to the board. If you desire to have students add the information, group them together and assign a different person to each group. Provide a list of requirements so that they know what information they are looking for. This information should include:
- Birth date and date of death
- Where they grew up
- What their job was
- Two important facts about their lives.
Underground Railroad Bulletin Board
If you are teaching students about the underground railroad, create a bulletin board display illustrating the facts along the way. Use construction paper to cut out different shops and homes where the slaves hid out along their path. Have students draw and decorate various people that can be placed along the way as well. Using brown paper, create a road that the slaves travel upon as they find their way to freedom. Add important facts from history along the road. Students can add other details as they want, including trees, animals, and more.
Underground Railroad Discipline Plan
Consider a modified version of the underground railroad bulletin board. Use the same display as described, and have the students draw pictures of themselves to place along the road. They are the slaves, moving along the road to freedom, earning steps along the path as they follow the class rules. Have freedom fighter prizes along the way to reward students for going above and beyond the class rules and expectations. Special's teachers can modify this by having each class represented by one slave figure on the path. At the end of the path, the students should receive some sort of freedom prize. Ideas include:
- extra recess
- computer time
- special game
- lunch with the teacher
- homework pass
Read more ideas for creative classroom management plans.
Think through your lessons for black history month, and you will find other great ideas that can be turned into bulletin board displays. Utilize parent volunteers and students to create the pieces for the bulletin board. Allowing the students to help is a great way to involve them in the learning process, and allow them to have ownership over part of the learning environment.
You may also be interested in other bulletin board ideas.
Read more information about creative history lessons including lessons on black history month.
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