[tossednchaos]

Hi Everyone, I have recently taken over a 4th grade classroom and we have to do some type of skit or presentation for a Black History Program next month. I have a group of unruly (to put it nicely :-) ) students and doing these type of things are not a strength of mine. I would like to really work hard with my students to show them and the rest of the school that we can behave and be successful. So...any suggestions on what we could do for the program? Any ideas will be appreciated!

[REB]

Hi. I teach music, grades K-6, in a rural area of southeast Louisiana, and I have some very hyper children (some days), and I taught the students a rap song that I found in an issue of musick8 magazine. It's the Martin Luther King Rap. (I started teaching it to them this week.)
I also found a skit called "If you Followed the Drinking Gourd" that was published in one issue of musick8, and there was an article about the Underground Railroad. And, there are songs, like "If you followed the Drinking Gourd", and "Road to Freedom", it has a gospel feel to it, but it's not religious in nature, also a musick8 song.
Just a couple ideas.
musick8.com is a great place to search for ideas as well, they have an idea bank, and you can type in the subject of what you're looking for, and get some ideas.

Hope this helps.
REB

[tossednchaos]

Thanks for the post, I didn't really know where to start with this, but now I'll definitely check out the musick8.com.

Have your children look up inventions by Blacks and have them not use any of the inventions by blacks found for one day. See how they can survive in this day and age if those things were never invented. Just a few examples; Refrigerator, light bulb, peanut butter, stop light, thermostat, stroller, HVAC, automatic gear shift (car), bicycle frame, cell phone, chamber commode, clothes dryer, curtain rod, door stop, dust pan, elevator, golf tee, hair brush, ice cream scooper, ironing board, key chain, mop, lunch pail, pencil sharpner, stove, phone transmitter. These are just a few things that I picked out from the everyday uses. This should be fun!

Dee from DC

Two years ago I had a pretty tough fourth grade class also. I took a popular song at that time, Laffy Taffy, and wrote Black History facts to the instrumentals and let the children sing them at the program. We were a hit and it was easy for them to learn because they loved the music.

Do you have the words to the laffy taffy song that you created?