You want meaningful, but engaging and appropriate ways to teach students about the trials and triumphs of Black Americans throughout history. We’ve got you covered! This page features the top teaching resources with tips and ideas on how to incorporate Black History Month activities for upper elementary classrooms.
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A Variety of Black History Month Activities for Upper Elementary Classrooms
Now, more than ever, teachers need relevant, high-quality activities and ideas showcasing the achievements of Black Americans.
Why?
Because only talking about slavery + Martin Luther King, Jr. or Rosa Parks doesn’t encompass all of Black History.
Not only that, but Black history is American history.
Which is why we offer you lots of ideas for Black History Month activities for upper elementary!
28 Days of Black History Read-Aloud Unit
To kick off our list of ideas, here’s a full unit that is super easy to implement in your teaching rotation for the month of February.
28 Days: Moments of Black History That Changed the World by Charles R. Smith presents a different Black achiever for each day of the month.
To make it even easier to use, I created a set of reading activities aligned to the book.
These activities give students chances to reflect of each Black leader and history maker, while also improving their reading comprehension.
In addition to this, your students get to take home their own finished booklet detailing the lives of Black heroes that they learned about in your class.
Martin Luther King, Jr. Mystery Pictures Biography
When you add mystery pictures with any lesson, it increases the engagement factor significantly!
Which is why I highly recommend this resource as a part of your Black History Month activities for your upper elementary students.
What makes this resources especially meaningful relates to the accurate and respectful imagery of Dr. King throughout each slide.
But in order for students to see these images, they must carefully read his biography and answer questions correctly to “solve” each mystery picture.
Not only can you use this for Black History Month, but you can also use this in January as an MLK Day activity.
Black History Month Biographies on Several Unsung Heroes
Learning about Martin Luther King, Jr. is great, but sadly a lot of curriculums stop there.
Can your students answer questions about these amazing achievers?:
- James Weldon Johnson
- Maya Angelou
- Carter G. Woodson
- Marian Wright Edelman
- Mary McLeod Bethune
- Alex Haley
If not, this Black History Month biographies activity set has what you need! Especially since one of these leaders started Black History Month!
This resource teaches kids about different leaders, while also practicing important ELA and SS academic skills.
Another upper elementary teacher gave this feedback:
“This set helped my students to learn about a variety of accomplished African-Americans during our nonfiction unit. The activities helped them find evidence in the text and use ordering skills to make timelines…” -Christina
Harriet Tubman Mystery Pictures Biography Activity
Let’s keep the ball rolling with different people to highlight. Another wonderful person to add to your Black History Month Activities for upper elementary is Harriet Tubman aka Moses.
This Google slides resource offers three different activities in one set:
- Nonfiction reading comprehension passages: 4 total with text aligned questions
- Design a $20 bill with Harriet Tubman’s image
- Constructed response writing slides
All of this while of course solving each mystery picture to learn more about Tubman’s life in a fun way!
Freedom on the Menu Reading Companion Activities
Do your students know about the Greensboro Four and their famous sit-ins at the counter?
If not, Carole Boston Weatherford’s book Freedom on the Menu presents the story beautifully!
This historical fiction read-aloud for kids teaches about the Greensboro sit-ins through the eyes of Connie: a young black girl whose college-aged siblings were arrested during the peaceful protests.
Using books like this offers a great way to teach hard history accurately and in a kid-friendly way.
I created graphic organizers, QR-Code vocabulary pages, reading comprehension activities and more aligned with this book.
This saves your lesson planning time because guided reading questions are also included in the set!
Ron’s Big Mission Book Activities : Ron McNair Black History Biography
For the science lovers in your classroom, I recommend Rose Blue and Corinne Naden’s book called Ron’s Big Mission.
Ron McNair was a Black American NASA astronaut and physicist who sadly died during the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger on mission STS-51-L.
But this beautiful read-aloud tells the story of his childhood courage to become an activist in his hometown.
He loved reading books, but Black children weren’t allowed to have library cards then.
So young Ronald stood up for his rights to check out science books from the public library.
This activity makes a great Black History Month read-aloud for 2nd and 3rd graders.
More Black History Month Books for Kids
Since this page features a few recommended books to read during February, here are even more posts to help you plan your read-aloud and chapter books to teach Black History.
Click either image to access these blog posts for more ideas. π‘ If you don’t have time to read them now, you can always save them on your favorite Pinterest board OR bookmark them to enjoy later. π€
Black History Month Bulletin Boards and Classroom Decor
Not only is it good to have fun learning activities, but it’s also great to update your decor for Black History Month.
I have a growing collection of inspiration for this with a specific Pinterest board dedicated to all things for Black History Month and Anti-racist teaching.
This board stays fresh with up-to-date ideas for:
- door decorations
- bulletin boards
- Black History Month art projects
- wall posters of Black leaders
- free printables
- AND MORE!
Browse the board for ideas on how to setup your classroom or better yet, follow me on Pinterest to see all the updated content consistently added!
How do you introduce Black History Month to elementary students?
To begin your lessons and activities, I recommend starting with Kiddle.co’s biography page on Carter G. Woodson–the founder of Black History Month.
If your school allows you to show YouTube, you can also find a quick video on him to show students.
He is one of the achievers I included with my Black History Month biographies.
Knowing WHY this month was created and HOW it all began will help you establish the tone of a celebration. This isn’t a month to mourn or have tension. It’s a month to be inspired and in awe!
Then I would move on to a great read-aloud like 28 Days: Moments in Black History that I mentioned in detail above.
Or use any of the other book ideas listed above to dig deeper into Black History.
Why is Black History Month important for elementary students?
To reiterate what I shared at the top of this page, Black History is American history.
It’s impossible to ignore the forced sacrifices of Black people while learning about any aspect of American history.
Think about all the great conveniences and luxuries we have in our everyday life today that were invented by Black Americans:
- folding chair
- gas mask
- traffic signal
- automatic elevator doors
- potato chips
- Super Soaker childrens’s water gun
- peanut butter
- AND MORE
In fact, if you have a Kindle Unlimited membership, (which I HIGHLY recommend if you don’t) you can read about all these great inventions and more with this children’s book:
How do I fit Black History Month Activities in with ALL my lessons for February?
I’m going to answer this by asking another question: why do you only need to teach about Black leaders during February?
No matter what grade or subject area you teach, there are academic standards related to nonfiction reading comprehension, social studies, and more that allow you to introduce an influential Black leader anytime.
So I recommend spreading these activities out all year long. ππΎ
To make this even easier for you, I have every resource mentioned above in a convenient bundle here:
This bundle grows every year and includes lesson plans with guided questions to help you feel confident teaching Black History content during February and beyond!
Plus, remember to bookmark this page as a reference to come back to anytime.
This page stays updated with the most helpful resources for you and your students. β€οΈππ€
Happy Black History Month Teaching my friend π€©
