Black History Month Celebration

This time of year my students and I focus on our African American history studies.  In class, we study many famous African Americans.  At home, my students continue their learning by creating a research project about an African American of their choice.  Our school then invites parents in to view the work of all of our students.  We call this our “gallery walk through”, and it really is a nice event.  It’s one of the few times when parents and students truly view the work of all students.  Not just those of a particular class or grade.  This year I decided to really play up our gallery walk through with a special invitation for all of my families.

Make showcasing your learning fun

To help liven things up, I decided to formally invite families to our gallery walk through.  I created these adorable invitations on Paperless Post. I actually created the invitations for my students and families in five minutes, and was able to email them to each family in my class.  My students and parents LOVED the invitations, and it has created a nice touch for the celebration.  This was my first time using Paperless Post, but I’m going to use them again for personal invites because it was so easy.  Parents have been using the RSVP feature, and it looks like we’ll have a nice turn out.

In class studies

The actual gallery walk through is taking place next week.  In class we have learned about Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, and Rosa Parks.  In addition to reading rich texts about these leaders, my students also created Pop Up books about each person we studied.  Here are some of the creative pieces we made in class.  Here is the black history month bundle my class uses to read about our African American heroes, and to make the pop up books.

At home studies

At home, each student is continuing their studies and creating a quilt square about a famous African American.  While we have not finished this year’s quilt yet, here is what last year’s quilt looked like.  For directions and the lesson we use to create this quilt, view this post on our freedom quilt.  Parents will see this year’s version when they arrive next week.

I believe the celebration will be wonderful.  It’s always nice when parents get a chance to see what their students are learning in school.  I also love displaying my students’ work in creative ways.  Whatever you choose to do for black history month this year, I hope that your lessons are meaningful, and successful.

Looking for more fun teaching ideas.  Check out these February Teacher Talk posts.