César Chávez led the efforts to improve working conditions for California's migrant farm workers and formed the United Farm Workers Union. Chávez was committed to non-violent protest. He conducted several fasts and led a number of strikes and grape boycotts to further the cause of field workers.
Chávez was able to accomplish a great deal in his lifetime, promoting the civil rights and improving the working conditions of migrant farm workers. Have your students name other leaders who, like Chávez, have used non-violent means to achieve their ends. Some examples could include Martin Luther King, Jr., Mohandas Gandhi, or Susan B. Anthony.
Then, have students work in small groups to research one of these civil rights leaders. Students should find information about the leader's philosophy, the social cause for which he or she was fighting, and some of the specific methods he or she used for peaceful protest. Next, have students work, in their groups, on a creative writing piece. Have students imagine how history might have been different if this person had never lived, or had held a different philosophy. Then ask them to write a short story (or alternately, a play or poem) about this imagined history.
The Library of Congress offers this brief description of César Chávez' work. The page includes a timeline and links to related information.
This resource, based on the PBS film The Fight in the Fields, provides information on Chávez' struggle. Features include information about the film, a timeline, and links to related resources.
This biography, from the California Department of Education, is intended for intermediate students. The detailed account includes related images.
This Internet activity from SCORE encourages upper grade students to select from 11 American labor leaders, including Chávez, and to create museum exhibits highlighting their accomplishments.
Each year, the American Library Association recognizes a multitude of books and authors for their quality and impact. Ranging from awards for young children's books such as the Caldecott and Newbery Medals, to the Belpré award for books celebrating Latino culture, to the Sibert Medal for distinguished informational books, the ALA recognizes a wide range of outstanding material for children, young adults, and adults.
The American Library Association Book, Print, and Media Awards for Children and Young Adults include:
- John Newbery Medal
- Randolph Caldecott Medal
- Coretta Scott King Author and Illustrator Awards
- Michael L. Printz Award
- Margaret A. Edwards Award
- Andrew Carnegie Medal
- Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal
- Pura Belpré Award
- Mildred L. Batchelder Award
- Schneider Family Book Award
Visit the ALA pages for each award. Select from the list above the award most relevant to your students' ages and interests. Have your students select a winning author or illustrator from the award set you have selected, and instruct them to complete one of these activities:
- Write or illustrate a story in your chosen author/illustrator's style.
- Conduct Internet research on your author/illustrator and then stage a mock interview based on your research.
- Present a book review of one of your chosen author/illustrator's "must-read" titles.
This Scholastic webpage includes links to past winners of ALA awards. Many titles offer links to additional resources, including author biographies, discussion guides, and more.
This booklist includes 100 top recommendations from the National Public Radio for children and young adults.
New Hampshire Public Television provides videos and teacher guides for 27 books, which have won either the Caldecott or the Newbery Medal.
Illustrator Mary Azarian won the 1999 Caldecott Medal for Snowflake Bentley, written by Jacqueline Briggs Martin. Azarian is a skilled woodcut artist who is strongly influenced by her love of gardening. You can enjoy additional examples of her work in A Gardener's Alphabet, Farmer's Alphabet, and Barn Cat, written by Carol P. Saul.
There are ways to bring snow to your students regardless of the weather outside your classroom. If you're fortunate enough to have a supply of snow outside your window, take a mini field trip outside with your students. Have them each hold a piece of black paper to "catch snowflakes" for inspection. Be sure to have magnifying glasses available so students can take an up-close look. Ask students to sketch some of the structures they observe and then compare their drawings to identify both similarities and differences among snowflakes.
If you're located in a warm winter climate, you can still offer a snowflake experience to your students. The SnowCrystals.com website offers a tutorial for Growing Your Own Snow Crystals. (Use caution as this experiment uses dry ice.) These homegrown snow crystals can be closely examined by students using magnifying glasses or microscopes.
This website provides snow-related data and resources, including images, data sets, articles, and more. Students can use the information found here for activities such as research projects or creating snow quizzes and snow books.
Students can access stunning microscopic images of snow crystals on this page. Connect a study of geometry and art by having students create their own unique snowflake designs.
This website provides an informative look at the science of snow. It suggests experiments and activities, and also offers a snowflake guide and frequently asked snow questions.
This interactive resource allows users to create original snowflakes.
After nearly a century of advocacy, National American Indian Heritage Month was first recognized through joint resolution by Congress in 1990. Now recognized annually, November is a time to learn more about the history and heritage of Native American peoples.
Engage your students in an exploration of Native American heritage through a study of Native American pourquoi tales. Pourquoi tales explain why something or someone, usually in nature, is the way it is. Have your students read a variety of Native American pourquoi tales, explore the cultural origins and signficance of these stories, and share similar stories from their own cultures.
This First People website includes a selection of tales, including many pourquoi tales. After reading these tales and identifying pourquoi story elements, brainstorm with the class a list of animals with distinctive features or a list of natural events such as lightning, rain, or snow, and then have students write original pourquoi tales for how they came to be. When students finish, they can publish their tales using the ReadWriteThink Printing Press. The "booklet" option allows students to add additional pages to accommodate longer stories. After printing the finished product, students can add illustrations to their stories.
This website offers an extensive list of resources related to Native American heritage and culture. Teachers and students can find links to Internet resources, selected Smithsonian online exhibits, and recommended reading.
This radio series, available in audio and text, features elders, historians, storytellers, artists, and leaders from thirteen American Indian Nations along the Lewis and Clark trail. These elders share their history, stories, culture, and music in a series of hour-long radio broadcasts.
Election Day is held on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. The first uniform Election Day was observed on November 4, 1845.
Have your students get involved with Election Day by creating posters to advertise Election Day and encourage registered voters to exercise their right to vote. Have small groups of students brainstorm lists of reasons why people should vote. Then, have them work in their groups to create posters using poster paper and paint or felt-tipped markers. Alternatively, they can use the ReadWriteThink Printing Press to create flyers. Students can also write persuasive essays that underscore the importance of getting out to vote or create a public service announcement or other multimedia persuasive piece. The ReadWriteThink lessons MyTube: Changing the World with Video Public Service Announcements and Students as Creators: Exploring Multimedia can be adapted for use with this activity.
This website, from the National Museum of American History, looks at the history of voting methods in the United States. The resource explores how ballots and voting systems have evolved over the years as a response to political, social, and technological change, transforming the ways in which Americans vote.
This resource, from PBS, introduces elementary-aged children to the importance of voting in a fun, interactive way.
This website, from the Library of Congress, focuses on some of the memorable elections since the first uniform Election Day on November 4, 1845.
This site includes a timeline of media coverage of important presidential races and presidencies.
In June 1829, the British Parliament established Greater London's Metropolitan Police, popularly known as "bobbies." Scotland Yard, the site of their first headquarters, opened on September 29, 1829, and eventually became the official name of the force.
Visit Scotland Yard's Crime Prevention Page and check out pages with advice on such topics as driving, mobile phones, and personal safety. Explore the resources on the Scotland Yard site and ask students to compare the advice given to London's citizens to the advice and tips available from your local police department. Ask students to hypothesize the reasons for the differences that they see-are the differences due to the different laws in the different countries, or something else?
After learning about Scotland Yard, encourage students to read fiction, such as the books listed in the text section below, in which Scotland Yard is featured. Students can use the interactive Mystery Cube to analyze the mystery book they read or to plan their own mystery story. More tips are available for the Mystery Cube.
In the history section of the Scotland Yard site, students can read about the establishment of one of the world's most well-known police departments.
This collection of stories from Scotland Yard includes details on famous cases. Be sure to review the collection to find stories that are appropriate for your students.
Part of the Crime, Punishment and Protest through Time collection, this question-and-answer style site provides details on such topics as why citizens originally opposed the founding of Scotland Yard.
F. Scott Fitzgerald began writing at an early age and published his first novel at the age of 23. He is best known for his novel The Great Gatsby, considered one of the great classics of twentieth-century literature, as well as the globe-trotting and ultimately tragic lifestyle he lived with his wife Zelda.
After reading The Great Gatsby, explore the novel's point of view with your students. Ask students to consider how the story, told from the point of view of the narrator Nick Carraway, might be different from another perspective. For instance, how might the novel change if it were retold from Gatsby's point of view? If it were retold from Daisy Buchanan's or Myrtle Wilson's point of view?
Have students work in pairs. Each pair of students should select a chapter from the novel, and then rewrite the chapter from the point of view of a different character. When they've completed their retellings, ask each pair to compare and contrast their papers. How were their chapters different? Similar? How did their chapters compare to the original?
Bring the class together and lead a discussion about the role of perspective in The Great Gatsby, and why Fitzgerald may have chosen the perspective he used in writing the novel.
The page from the University of South Carolina includes complete texts, articles, essays, and images from Fitzgerald's scrapbook.
This PBS resource offers information about both Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda. Included are images and biographical information.
This University of Adelaide Library e-text features links to each chapter of The Great Gatsby. A link to the complete text is also found on this page.
This Library of Congress literature unit explores primary sources from the 1920s in the context of Fitzgerald’s novel and then has students create a newspaper inspired by both the primary sources and fictional events from the novel.
This video, Part 1 of 2, provides students with some help in understanding the major plot lines of The Great Gatsby.
This video, Part 2 of 2, provides students with some help in understanding the major plot lines of The Great Gatsby. If you watch it on YouTube, take note of the "spoiler alert" for students.
American writer William Carlos Williams was born in Rutherford, New Jersey, in 1883. As a medical student at the University of Pennsylvania, Williams met and became friends with Ezra Pound and Hilda Doolittle (who used the pseudonym H.D.), and these friendships affected his work as a writer. Over the course of his life, Williams wrote poetry, novels, short stories, essays, and plays.
Williams' poems are often used in the classroom as models for poetry writing. In addition to the resources in the lesson plans below, explore the student poems at Plum Good Poetry, from Barry Lane's Discover Writing website.
Celebrate Williams' birthday by asking your students to write imitation poems of their own. Choose a poem and make copies for students or write the poem on the board. With students, take the opportunity to review grammatical structures as you work through the way that the poem is written. Pay attention to sentences, phrases, and parts of speech. With the structure of the poem identified, ask students to write original imitations, using the same sort of sentences, phrases, and parts of speech that Williams did. Publish your finished work with the ReadWriteThink Printing Press or Stapleless Book.
For more on imitation poems, you may wish to use the ReadWriteThink lesson Literary Parodies: Exploring a Writer's Style through Imitation.
The Academy of American Poets page for Williams includes biographical information and the text of many of Williams' poems. The site includes an audio recording of the poet reading his poem "To Elsie."
This collection of resources from the Modern American Poetry website includes biographical information, photos, critical information, and poems.
In this Prairie Home Companion episode, private eye Guy Noir investigates a poetic catastrophe with the help of the Poet Laureate of the United States, Billy Collins, who shares parodies of Williams' "This Is Just to Say." Both transcript and audio versions of the show are available.
The University of Pennsylvania offers this collection of sound recordings of Williams reading his poetry at several events between 1942 and 1962.
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston was published in 1937. The novel tells of the life and loves of Janie Crawford in a story that is highlighted by its use of storytelling, black folklore, and dialects.
Their Eyes Were Watching God explores stories and storytelling. To introduce the novel in your class, ask students to brainstorm the kinds of stories they know. If students offer specific stories, list the stories and then go back through the list and divide the stories into categories such as family stories, mythology, folklore, urban legends, and so forth.
Next, ask students where these stories come from. Students should identify such sources as experience, books, parents, ancestors, history, friends, nature, fears, dreams, childhood, and home. As students begin reading the novel, return to these questions-identifying the kinds of stories that are being told, where the stories come from, and why they are being told.
This Today in History entry from the Library of Congress celebrates Hurston's birthday. Hurston was born on January 7, 1891 in Eatonville, Florida, the first incorporated black town in the United States.
This site offers biographical information about Hurston, lists of her books, related news, links to additional resources, and guides for educators and reading groups. Included is an Instructor's Guide for Their Eyes Were Watching God.
The Library of Congress offers a collection of plays written by Hurston but unpublished until 1997, well after her death. The plays reflect Hurston's life, as well as her studies of African American folklore.
International Literacy Day (ILD), celebrated annually on September 8, shines a spotlight on global literacy needs. On ILD (and every day), advocate for a literate world, support literacy educators and leaders, and celebrate the power of literacy.
International Literacy Day is celebrated annually and is designed to focus attention on literacy issues. The International Literact Association estimates that 780 million adults, nearly two-thirds of whom are women, do not know how to read and write. They also estimate that 94—115 million children worldwide do not have access to education. International Literacy Day is just one way groups can strive to increase literacy around the world.
This year, International Literacy Day (8 September) will be celebrated across the world under the theme of 'Literacy in a digital world'. On 7 and 8 September, 2017 a special two-day event will be organized at UNESCO’s Headquarters in Paris, with the overall aim to look at what kind of literacy skills people need to navigate increasingly digitally-mediated societies, and to explore effective literacy policies and programmes that can leverage the opportunities that the digital world provides.
Invite students to think about how they access literacy in a digital world.
ILA supports International Literacy Day and the countless activities that take place worldwide. Visit for an archive of resources.
This year, International Literacy Day (8 September) will be celebrated across the world under the theme of 'Literacy in a digital world'.