Sixth Graders Learning about the CIvil RIghts Movement

Sixth Graders Learning about the Civil Rights Movement
by Joan Hamilton

Collaboration is a core value of the Brookline Public Schools. Scott Moore, head of the Educational Technology and Libraries Department, used a recent two hour meeting to give librarians and ET specialists time to work together to plan a research unit. The result for Sandra Sicard and me was a sixth grade research unit on the Civil Rights era. Following that two hour meeting, we worked several more hours with the sixth grade teachers and specialists to work out the logistics of implemention.

The result is Pierce's sixth graders have been hard at work since their first day of school in 2009 researching, reading, and writing about the Civil Rights Movement in this country. The essential question they are answering is: What happened during the Civil Rights era (1950 - 1968) that brought change to our country? One objective is to gain the background information that will allow them to understand better the novel, The Watson's Go to Birmingham by Christopher Paul Curtis, a 6th grade benchmark book. The book is paritially set in Alabama in 1963 during the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Each student individually is researching a person, event, or organization. Each student's final product will be one page containing two paragraphs -- one telling the "who, what, where" about their topic, and the second explaining the impact on the progress of civil rights in this country. They must also include a picture and a quotation. Each class will produce a civil rights era "primer", a compilation of individual student work, that will be available on line as well as in print in each classroom.
Students' research tools have been books both from Pierce School Library and the Brookline Public Library as well as online databases and web sites. They have seemed both excited and amazed by what they are finding. "It's hard to believe it was so violent." "These people were amazingly courageous," are two comments I have overheard. Searching for primary sources, one student exclaimed with excitement, "Oh, look! here is an intereview." Another chimed in, "I found a letter." Besides giving students background information for Watson's , we hope this research will increase their appreciation of the historic inauguration that will take place next week.