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Melba Pattillo and Ruby Bridges: Two Pioneers of School Integration
Subjects
Grade
Brief Description
Students put themselves in the shoes of the students who integrated Little Rock High School in 1957-58. Note: The primary resources in this activity provide powerful and poignant descriptions of what those students faced.
Objectives
Students will
Keywords
Ruby Bridges, Melba Pattillo, Little Rock, integration, civil rights, Black History, African American, hero, Martin Luther King, Thurgood Marshall
Lesson Plan
In this lesson, students read the recollections of two women who were among the pioneers of school integration in the Deep South.
Introduce students to the two women:
Share the resources below with students; they are reflections of two girls experiences that were written by the girls as grown women. You might share these pages as a class, or students might read them online or in printed form on their own.
After reading those resources, you might also:
After sharing the thoughts of those two women as they look back on their early experiences, challenge students to attempt to put themselves in the shoes of one of those two girls; ask students to write a journal entry that one of the girls might have written after the first week in their new school.
Assessment
Students publish their diary entries for their classmates to read.
Lesson Plan Source
Education World
Submitted By
Gary Hopkins
National Standards
LANGUAGE ARTS: English
GRADES K - 12
NL-ENG.K-12.1 Reading for Perspective
NL-ENG.K-12.2 Reading for Understanding
NL-ENG.K-12.5 Communication Strategies
NL-ENG.K-12.6 Applying Knowledge
NL-ENG.K-12.8 Developing Research Skills
NL-ENG.K-12.9 Multicultural Understanding
NL-ENG.K-12.12 Applying Language Skills
PHYSICAL EDUCATION AND HEALTH: Physical Education
GRADES K - 12
NPH.K-12.6 Respect for Others
NPH.K-12.7 Understanding Challenges
SOCIAL SCIENCES: Civics
GRADES K - 4
NSS-C.K-4.2 Values and Principles of Democracy
NSS-C.K-4.5 Roles of the Citizen
GRADES 5 - 8
NSS-C.5-8.3 Principles of Democracy
NSS-C.5-8.5 Roles of the Citizen
GRADES 9 - 12
NSS-C.9-12.3 Principles of Democracy
NSS-C.9-12.5 Roles of the Citize
SOCIAL SCIENCES: U.S. History
GRADES K - 4
NSS-USH.K-4.1 Living and Working together in Families and Communities, Now and Long Ago
NSS-USH.K-4.3 The History of the United States: Democratic Principles and Values and the People from Many Cultures Who Contributed to Its Cultural, Economic, and Political Heritage
GRADES 5 - 12
NSS-USH.5-12.9 Era 9: Postwar United States (1945 to early 1970s)
TECHNOLOGY
GRADES K - 12
NT.K-12.1 Basic Operations and Concepts
NT.K-12.5 Technology Research tools
Click to return to this week's Lesson Planning article, Lessons in Black History.
See additional lessons and resources on Education World's special Black History Month archive page.
Updated 12/22/2014