[megkers]

I'm a first year fourth grade teacher. I just found out that the fourth to sixth graders at my school have to be in a Black History Month Assembly...in 7 days!!! I'm a little freaked out about it and was wondering if anyone has any ideas. I don't want to be boring and have the kids recite MLK speech, and so far that's all I can come up with. Help please!!!

[Gitt]

How about you assign each child a famous black american. They can hold up a picture printed from the internet and recite a small blurb (can be printed on the back of picture) re how they became famous. That way the kids do the research, they compose a paragraph or blurb, but there doesn't have to be any memorization.

This year, my high schoolers are expanding on our idea from last year. We have a powerpoint and a burned CD that documents the "Evolution of African American Music". Kids love it because everyoe loves music. I started with African drumbeats, ragtime, blues, swing, motown, soul, jazz, R&B, hip-hop,and so forth......

[megkers]

Sorry I'm so late replying...

That is a great idea! Since I had like a day to prepare, I did a sort of must through the ages of the Civil Rights Movement. A girl in my class wrote a song in honor of MLK for the 50's, we performed My Girl for the 70's, and I Believe I Can Fly for the 90's. The kids loved it and everyone was complimenting us on our performance.

Next year, I hope to do something more involved like you are suggesting.

Hi,
I was wondering- where did you find the music and songs for your assembly. I am currently working on the same type of thing with first grade and I stuck. can you reccomend any websites or books I could use??

I took some of the ideas posted here and put them together. The 2nd grade class put on a wonderful program. We invited parents, board members and people from the community. The kids did the evolution of music, we had one student to sing a spiritual song, three boys lip sang my girl, one girl tap danced, and about 20 children did walk it out and the soilder boy representing the hip hop side of music. As they were on stage dancing half of the children went out into the audience and grabbed teachers, parents, the Superintendent and school principle to dance. The crowd really loved it. We even did a small skit, including a man and women speaking gullah. The show was a hit. The community is still talking about and I think that we will have a larger crowd to come out this year simply because of how she program went last year. It was hard work but the kids pulled it off.