Black History Month: The List

What with snow, standardized testing, and life, I've been pretty bad lately about keeping up with the blog.  So, my apologies.

Before I get into the actual post, a couple things: the 7th grade social studies ISTEP will be on Friday.  The IDOE has given us four topics that will likely be covered on Friday's test.  PLEASE CHECK THIS OUT RIGHT NOW.  Go to the last page, and read the middle column.  (It's really, really short.)  Consider giving a quick quiz to your kid over that stuff.

Second: yesterday we did our colonization simulation.  I'm always excited to post about it, but my phone didn't have any storage left, so I couldn't take any pictures.  If you were absent yesterday and want to make up the points, read at least two posts from this list, and do what they say at the bottom of the post.

As for Black History Month, every day we had school I added another name to the list of prominent people of African ancestry.  Students could get extra credit by researching that person and writing a paragraph about them.  I'm extending this through the end of the week.  Here's the list:

• Fannie Lou Hamer
• Mansa Musa
• Nelson Mandela
• James Baldwin
• Scott Joplin
• Nat Turner
• Sojourner Truth
• Toni Morrison
• Benjamin Banneker
• Malcolm X
• Crispus Attucks
• Colin Powell
• Richard Wright
• Desmond Tutu
• Claudette Colvin
• Thurgood Marshall
• Leo Africanus
• Muhammad Ali
• Mathias de Sousa
• Hank Aaron

The list is admittedly flawed.  It focuses too much on the 20th century.  Men heavily outnumber women.  I intentionally left off the names that students hear year after year - I wanted to expand their horizons, rather than keep them narrow.  That said, maybe I was wrong to keep them off.

Please help me out by telling me other names I should have included.  You can put them in the comments, or if you have me in class, bring in a list.

Students in my class can earn extra credit by reading and discussing this blog with an adult.  If they've done that, have them define the following 4 terms on a piece of paper.  (The terms come from the IDOE link above.)

Natural resources:

GDP:

Liberation:

Colonization:

Have the adult you read and discussed with sign the paper.  Turn it in tomorrow for extra credit.  (Make sure your name, date, and hour are on it as well.)