Each year at my school students work on a unit of study around a social justice topic as a final project of the year. At the end of the unit of study, the grade level works together to create a performance to exhibit learning. As a team of fourth, fifth, and sixth graders this year our unit of study was "Song as a Form of Protest" through history. We each took a time period to explore with our grade level students.
My students focused on the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. We started our exploration with the PBS video American Experience Soundtrack for a Revolution. Students were able to hear first hand accounts from people from this era and specifically at each of our three major events: Lunch Counter protests, The Children's March in Birmingham and March on Washington. Our students had a chance to look at a few events they have never explored and familiar events through a different lens by examining how song impacted the movements.
Next, students explored one of the events they were most interested in with a group and a teacher facilitator. The students used a graphic organizer to identify key ideas. We used the search engine Kidrex and this created Google Document graphic organizer for students to note take.
Once students had a foundation of understand for the history of each event, they then did an image search to represent and share the story of the events. Students did this search in groups and saved images directly to their own iPad. Once the images were saved they placed all the images in a shared Dropbox folder. This allowed all the students in the group to benefit from each other's searches and finds. Students then worked independently or with a partner to create an iMovie with images. We then took one as a group and wrote the script for the voiceover from the research portion to create a narrated movie. Students then determined as a group a song from the research that best represented their event.
Below are two of the three videos, once the space opens on Vimeo I will add the final video! I am so proud of the work and they loved sharing their learning with the school and now with you!
Birmingham Childrens from Autumn Laidler on Vimeo.
Lunch Counter from Autumn Laidler on Vimeo.
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