Notes for Teachers

This WebQuest was developed as an educational resource for students of American Literature and History. Students will explore the Civil Rights Movement and draw personal connections as they determine how it impacts our lives today.

To implement this unit you will need

  • Computers with Internet access
  • Word processing program
  • PowerPoint program or another presentation software may be useful.
  • Scoring Guide for assessing the final project

Resource links are provided to use as you guide your students through the process to complete this WebQuest.

Additional Resources for Teachers:

Learners

This lesson is anchored in secondary Language Arts and Social Studies.  Teachers should have students explore the Interactive King Chronology as a base of common knowledge before starting this project.

Student should have basic skills in world processing and navigating the Internet. Also, the teacher should familiarize students with Thinking Maps® as tools to organize their thoughts and illustrate their final product.

Curriculum Standards

Language Arts

3.0 Literary Response and Analysis
Students read and respond to historically or culturally significant works of literature that reflect and enhance their studies of history and social science. They conduct in-depth analyses of recurrent themes.

Research and Technology
1.6 Develop presentations by using clear research questions and creative and critical research strategies (e.g., field studies, oral histories, interviews, experiments, electronic sources).
1.7 Use systematic strategies to organize and record information (e.g., anecdotal scripting, annotated bibliographies).
 

2.3 Deliver oral responses to literature
a. Demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of the significant ideas of literary works (e.g., make assertions about the text that are reasonable and supportable).
b. Analyze the imagery, language, universal themes, and unique aspects of the text through the use of rhetorical strategies (e.g., narration, description, persuasion, exposition, a combination of those strategies).
c. Support important ideas and viewpoints through accurate and detailed references to the text or to other works.
d. Demonstrate an awareness of the author's use of stylistic devices and an appreciation of the effects created.
 

History-Social Science

11.10 Students analyze the development of federal civil rights and voting rights.

  1. Examine the roles of civil rights advocates including the significance of Martin Luther King, Jr. 's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" and "I Have a Dream" speech.
     
  2. Discuss the diffusion of the civil rights movement of African Americans from the churches of the rural South and the urban North, including the resistance to racial desegregation in Little Rock and Birmingham, and how the advances influenced the agendas, strategies, and effectiveness of the quests of American Indians, Asian Americans, and Hispanic Americans for civil rights and equal opportunities.
     
  3. Analyze the passage and effects of civil rights and voting rights legislation (e.g., 1964 Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act of 1965) and the Twenty-Fourth Amendment, with an emphasis on equality of access to education and to the political process.