Classroom Activities

This shortest month of the year is typically filled with history reports, pageants, guest speakers, cultural fairs and the like. Seldom a day goes by that we don't hear the names of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Madame C.J. Walker, George Washington Carver, and so on.

This lesson encourages students to investigate domestic hunger in the United States as well as in their own communities and offers resources to support youth in the fight against hunger.

A guide to classroom activities exploring arguments about what blues music is "authentic"

Three new lesson plans for grades 9-12 offer educators fresh, engaging strategies to deepen students' understanding about race and racism throughout history and today.

Create a lesson plan that puts math and science in context for your students.

Shakespeare’s classic play is a must-read for all high school students. Might the tragic end of Romeo & Juliet have been different if the Montagues and the Capulets had crossed their social boundaries?

Explore the U.S. Census data and create your own!

Last year at Seth Johnson Elementary, in Montgomery, Ala., the fourth- and fifth-grade students participated in the National Mix It Up at Lunch Day. In preparation for the day, we challenged fifth-graders to think about how they matter to the people around them – and to write essays titled “We All Matter.”

Students produce assertions on slips of paper and “stock” the classroom Assertion Jar. As a daily or occasional activity, students practice refutation skills by pulling an assertion from the jar and refuting it either orally or in writing. Appropriate as a writing prompt or journal activity.

Building on the common early grades theme of “neighborhood and community,” this lesson uses a free, downloadable children’s book, “The Gift,” to drive home the idea that people—and their diverse interests—are what make our communities special. 

This lesson has students distinguish between charity (volunteering in a soup kitchen) and justice (working to end the inequalities that make soup kitchens necessary). It asks students to think about root causes (inequality) versus symptoms (poverty that leads to the need for soup kitchens). 

Based on Mixing It Up with Purpose

Based on Musical Chairs

Based on Crossing Borders/Border Crossings and What's In a Name?"

Students sit at tables with students they don’t usually sit with.

Excerpted from http://adulted.about.com/od/icebreakers/qt/2minutemixer.htm

This lesson features activities that will make students aware of the roles that undocumented immigrants play in the harvest and processing of food and other necessary products, help them understand the status of and choices that face undocumented workers in our country and appreciate the importance of human rights.

This lesson is the fourth in a series called Expanding Voting Rights. The overall goal of the series is for students to explore the complicated history of voting rights in the United States. Two characteristics of that history stand out: First, in fits and starts, more and more Americans have gained the right to vote. Second, over time, the federal government's role in securing these rights has expanded considerably.

This is the first lesson of the series, I See You, You See Me: Body Image and Social Justice, which helps students think about their bodies and body image as related to broader issues of social justice and the harm caused from stereotypes.