Create and display a patchwork quilt of notable African Americans.
Obtain from the school or town library age-appropriate biographies of notable or influential African-Americans.
Assign, or ask students to choose, one of the biographies to read. Or, for a quicker lesson, have each student
research a notable African American and read his or her biography online. You can find the names of possible research
subjects and/or brief biographies at the sites below:
Provide students with drawing paper and invite each student to draw a picture based on a scene from the life of
the person he or she read about.
Provide students with 3x5 index cards and have them write brief descriptions of their illustrated scenes and attach
them to the bottom right corner of their drawings.
Mount each drawing on a larger sheet of colored paper and attach the drawings to the bulletin board to form a
quilt. Use additional colored paper or crepe paper to create a border for the quilt. (With older students or a small
class, you might use the drawings to create a timeline instead of a quilt.)
Title the bulletin board "A Patchwork of African-American History."
As a follow-up activity, you might invite students to visit one of the sites below to learn about African-American
quilts:
Do you have a bulletin board idea to share? Send your most successful bulletin board idea (with a sketch or photo, if possible) to BestIdea@EducationWorld.com. If we use it, we'll send you an official Education World mug!
