Civil Rights Unit

My favorite unit!  I love teaching the Civil Rights and my students always love learning about the Civil Rights.  And I feel like I need to teach this unit with webquests because majority of the time, I have to return my textbooks during or before this unit.  But I like that students can look up more pictures than what the textbook provides, along with video clips, speeches, current events, etc.  All of these webquests are available in pdf or google doc.

I give a basic overview webquest of the Civil Rights Movement in general.  This is 35 questions and covers the entire movement.  I like to start the unit off with this before I do any direct instruction.  I then go into depth with the entire unit, doing various activities along with webquests.

I first start with the Jim Crow Laws Webquest, after the Civil War and Reconstruction.  If students do not understand what the Jim Crow Laws are, the goal of them, how terrible they were towards African Americans, then they are not going to understand why there was an entire Civil Rights Movement Protest.

After I teach Jim Crow Laws, I then teach Brown v Board of Education and Little Rock 9.  I have webquests for both and tons of video clips for both.

The same year is when the Montgomery Bus Boycott happened, so I do a webquest on the Montgomery Bus Boycott.  This was the first major protest/boycott of the Civil Rights Movement and put Martin Luther King Jr on the map as one of the Civil Rights Leaders.  And who could forget Rosa Parks!  This boycott wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for her.

Freedom Riders!  This is one of my new favorite things to teach in history.  I have a webquest that the students do first.  Once students finish this, they are hooked and want to learn more.  I then have them watch the PBS documentary and answer questions.  The documentary comes off more like a movie- it is done SO WELL!  Then students take a quick quiz on the Freedom Riders.

`I then do a webquest on March on Washington.  This has a little biography section on Martin Luther King Jr, then on the March on Washington itself, followed by analyzing Martin Luther King Jr's "I Have a Dream Speech."

After those comes my other favorite lesson to teach: Bloody Sunday/Selma to Montgomery March.  This always seems to be the students favorite and captivates them best.  I have a webquest that we do first.  Then I have them watch the movie Selma with movie guide questions.  It just makes a very powerful lesson for students!

If interested, I have all of the webquests mentioned above in a bundle of better value.  All 8 webquests are in this and can be printed in pdf form, or it also comes with a google doc link so you can use it in your digital classroom!