Class Antics – Inside Elementary Education

Reading Comprehension and Writing Nonfiction

Teachers, here are FREE Leap Year worksheets written by a National Board Certified Teacher. I hope you and your students enjoy them!

The first one is a reading comprehension worksheet about Leap Year.  It’s a good, basic introduction to the concept of Leap Year that is appropriate for third grade and up.

Next is a writing worksheet about how and why Julius Caesar created Leap Year and rearranged the calendar. To shake things up a little, this worksheet challenges students to write a newspaper article about the event. The article gives “notes” our fictitious reporter took at the press conference—in a handy who, what, where, when, why format.

Stay tuned for Free Leap Year Worksheets Part Two: Leap Year trivia reading comprehension and Leap Year math!

For years, I have read magazine interviews in which actress Eva Longoria* mentions that she makes the world’s best guacamole.  This month she was kind enough to share her recipe with Self magazine—just in time for the Super Bowl**!  Eva Longoria’s guacamole will go very well with chili.

 Try it and you’ll see: it really is the best ever!  I live in the Southwest, so I know a thing or two about guacamole.  Every year, students make guacamole and salsa for the class for their “How-to” presentations.

Best Guacamole EVER!

6 ripe avocados, diced
4 medium tomatoes, diced
1 large white onion, finely chopped
1 medium Serrano pepper, finely chopped
½ cup chopped fresh cilantro
½ cup fresh lemon juice
2 tsp kosher salt

Mix all ingredients.  That’s it!

If you like the recipe, check out Eva Longoria’s new cookbook, Eva’s Kitchen: Cooking with Love for Family and Friends

 *of Desperate Housewives fame.  I have seen some of Eva’s movies.  I really liked Over Her Dead Body—Eva is very funny as a bride who dies on her wedding day—and haunts her fiancé when he falls for a psychic.

**Funny story: one year I asked a routine question while teaching third grade math and a boy raised his hand.  Instead of answering, he blurted out, “Okay, who do you like: the Saints or the Colts?  It took me forever to calm the class down.  I asked the boy to write a paragraph about why you don’t poll the class about football during math.

Part four: the Smithsonian helps you teach about the Tuskegee Airmen

The Tuskegee Airmen were the first African-American aerial combat unit.  Deployed in Europe during WWII, they painted the tails of their planes red and became known as the Red Tails.  To the Americans, they were the Red Tail Angels.  To the Germans, they were the Red Tail Devils.  To all of us, they are heroes who sought a Double Victory: victory in the war abroad and victory over prejudice, segregation and Jim Crow laws at home.

This is part four of a series about the Tuskegee Airmen to coordinate with the January 20 release of Red Tails, the Lucasfilm action movie.  Go see it!

The Smithsonian’s National Air and SpaceMuseum created a 50 page teacher’s guide about African American Pioneers in Aviation (pdf).  It is every bit as outstanding as you’d expect a Smithsonian publication to be.  You will love the detailed biographies, helpful lesson plans, ready-made worksheets, and primary sources.  

(Remind your students that the Tuskegee Airmen came to the rescue in the movie Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian)

No Tuskegee Airmen lesson could be complete without a lesson about the pilot shown in the photo above: Benjamin O. Davis Jr.  He was the first African-American general in the U.S. Air Force, son of the first African-American general in the U.S. Army. 

Benjamin O. Davis Jr. was the first African American to graduate from West Point in the 20^th century.  During his four years at West Point, he was completely ostracized by his classmates.  He never had a roommate.  He ate by himself.  Fellow cadets only spoke to him when official duty made it necessary.

“It was designed to make me buckle, but I refused to buckle. They didn’t understand that I was going to stay there, and I was going to graduate. I was not missing anything by not associating with them. They were missing a great deal by not knowing me.”—Benjamin O. Davis Jr.

Benjamin O. Davis Jr.’s leadership was invaluable to the Tuskegee Airmen.  When he led the 332^nd Fighter Group in their mission as fighter escort pilots protecting bombers, he insisted that they stay with their bombers at all times, at all costs.  The Tuskegee Airmen never lost a bomber and won the admiration of American bomber crews and the German pilots who flew against them. Of Davis, a Tuskegee Airman said “it was because of the discipline he exacted that we were able to make the record we did.”

Benjamin O. Davis Jr. knew a thing or two about unit pride and public relations.  He thought of painting the tails of their P-51 Mustangs red so the bomber groups would know who was escorting them. Read Benjamin O. Davis Jr., American : An Autobiography

This past weekend, I was excited to meet Tuskegee Airmen in an event to honor their legacy.  I was thrilled to pose for pictures with three Tuskegee Airmen.  I am posting a picture for each entry in this miniseries.  This photo is Tuskegee Airman Lt. Col. Asa Herring and me.  (The photo is a true snapshot—in my mind I was exactly next to Lt. Col. Herring and in the photo I block him.  Sorry.)

Asa Herring graduated from high school at 16 and passed the U.S. Army Air Corps Aviation Cadet written examination at age 17.  He had to wait until he was 18 before he could be inducted and begin flight training.  During his 22 years of military service, Asa served in England, Korea, Germany, Vietnam, and other temporary assignments worldwide. He was the first Black Squadron Commander at Luke Air Force Base*, Arizona, where he trained pilots in the F-104G Advanced Jet Fighter Gunnery Program. He was officially appointed an honorary Command Pilot in the German Luftwaffe.  Click to read a fact sheet about Lt. Col. Herring, provided by Luke AFB.

*Incidentally, Luke AFB is home of the Emerald Knights, one of my dad’s old squadrons and the one I remember most clearly.  They were based at Homestead AFB near Miami when my dad flew with them.  Visit my about the author page and scroll down to see a photo of my dad’s last flight.

Tuskegee Airmen, Part 1 – Tuskegee Airmen, Part 2
Tuskegee Airmen, Part 3 – Tuskegee Airmen, Part 4

Part three:  A glowing review of Red Tails, the new George Lucas movie

The Tuskegee Airmen were the first African-American aerial combat unit. Deployed in Europe during WWII, they painted the tails of their planes red and became known as the Red Tails. To the Americans, they were the Red Tail Angels. To the Germans, they were the Red Tail Devils. To all of us, they are heroes who sought a Double Victory: victory in the war abroad and victory over prejudice, segregation and Jim Crow laws at home.

This is part three of a planned four-part series about the Tuskegee Airmen to coordinate with the January 20 release of Red Tails, the Lucasfilm action movie.  I just got back from the movie and I feel that I MUST write about it.

Red Tails is an awesome movie!  The special effects are amazing—you really feel like you’re in the P-51 Mustangs with the Red Tails.  The dogfighting sequences make you think of Top Gun and Star Wars.  I read that George Lucas spent three years getting the action sequences just right, and it was worth the time and expense.  Red Tails is very, very generous with exciting action sequences.  There are more in this movie than any other aerial combat movie I’ve ever seen, which makes Red Tails the coolest dogfighting movie ever, imho.

 The exploits shown in Red Tails are so amazing that they are hard to believe.  I heard fellow theater goers wondering aloud about whether the Red Tails really sank a destroyer.  Yes, they did!  In 1944,  Lt. Gwynn Pierson, Lt. Windell Pruitt and four other Tuskegee Airmen attacked a German Destroyer in 1944.  Accurate machine gun fire hit the powder magazine and sank the ship, and Pierson and Pruitt are credited with the destruction of an enemy ship using only machine gun fire.  You can read about it here.

I also heard people wondering if the Tuskegee Airmen really shot down German jets.  Yes, they did!  It happened a lot like in the movie, on their longest escort mission all the way to Berlin.  Charles Brantley, Earl Laneand Roscoe Brown shot down German jets over Berlin that day, earning the 332nd Fighter Group a Distinguished Unit Citation. Read about it here.  That mission was led by Col. Benjamin O. Davis Jr., commander of the Tuskegee Airmen.  Terrence Howard’s character was clearly based on this remarkable man.  I will write more about Benjamin O. Davis Jr. in Post Four, which also includes the last of the pictures I took with Tuskegee Airmen.

 The last thing I heard people wonder about was whether it was realistic for a Tuskegee Airman to strike up a relationship with an Italian woman.  I don’t know much about the personal lives of the Tuskegee Airmen, but I do know that in Lucasfilm’s Double Victory documentary, the pilots explain that Italian people viewed them not as African-Americans, but simply as Americans.  Double Victory has some neat pictures of Tuskegee Airmen clowning with kids and spending time with Italian families. Since I lived in Italy, I found it enriched my movie experience to understand what Lightning’s fiancée said to him, especially when they first met and neither spoke the other’s language.

Here is a clip showing a special screening of Red Tails for cadets at the U. S. Air Force Academy.  The cadets loved it!  (By the way, my dad is a USAF Academy graduate—the Air Force calls them Zoomies.  My dad is also a retired fighter pilot, and he said Red Tails did a great job of showing dogfights.)

Tuskegee Airmen, Part 1 – Tuskegee Airmen, Part 2
Tuskegee Airmen, Part 3 – Tuskegee Airmen, Part 4

Part two: Double Victory

The Tuskegee Airmen were the first African-American aerial combat unit. Deployed in Europe during WWII, they painted the tails of their planes red and became known as the Red Tails. To the Americans, they were the Red Tail Angels. To the Germans, they were the Red Tail Devils. To all of us, they are heroes who sought a Double Victory: victory in the war abroad and victory over prejudice, segregation and Jim Crow laws at home.

This is part two of a series about the Tuskegee Airmen to coordinate with the January 20 release of Red Tails, the Lucasfilm action movie. Go see it opening weekend!

George Lucas wanted to make a movie about the Tuskegee Airmen for over 20 years. He funded Red Tails himself, first with $58 million for production and then $30 million for distribution. Red Tails is an action-packed movie that tells the story of the Tuskegee Airmen protecting bombers flying over Germany. Lucas produced a documentary, Double Victory: The Story of the Tuskegee Airmen in Their Own Words. The documentary has screened at numerous events honoring Tuskegee Airmen. I hope you get to see it!

The Tuskegee Airmen faced prejudice, discrimination and segregation at every step. Before WWII, African-Americans were barred from flying in the U.S. military. Civil rights organizations and the black press put pressure on Washington, ultimately leading to the formation of an all African-American pursuit squadron based in Tuskegee, Alabama. The fledgling program got a boost from First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who visited the site and took a much-publicized flight with African-American chief civilian instructor C. Alfred “Chief” Anderson.

While stationed in Italy, bomber groups that the Red Tails protected did not know the pilots were black until a B-17 had to make an emergency landing at their base. In the Double Victory documentary, veterans describe how some in the bomber crew accepted the Tuskegee Airmen, but a few men chose to sleep in their plane rather than stay with the black pilots and crewmembers. Temperatures dropped so low that those men knocked on the barracks door in the middle of the night and then stayed with the Tuskegee Airmen for days. Censors found a letter home in which a recruit asked his sweetie to “forgive him” for staying with the black airmen for three days.

When the Tuskegee Airmen returned home after the war, they did not receive the hero’s welcome their white counterparts enjoyed. They faced segregation, Jim Crow laws, and discriminatory employment practices. You can trace the impetus for the Civil Rights movement resulting from how African-American veterans were treated after WWII through President Truman’s signing of Executive Order 9981 ending segregation in the military.

Here are some resources you can use for your own learning or in the classroom (depending on the grade level you teach).

PBS Home Video: The Tuskegee Airmen: This is an excellent choice for the classroom. It his educational, entertaining, and the PBS brand is above reproach from parents or administrators.

The Tuskegee Airmen: An Illustrated History: 1939-1949

The Tuskegee Airmen Story

Wind Flyers

Don’t miss the 1995 movie The Tuskegee Airmenstarring Lawrence Fishburne and Cuba Gooding Jr.

Georgia’s Kennesaw State University created an excellent Teacher’s Guide about the Tuskegee Airmen

This past weekend, I was excited to meet Tuskegee Airmen in an event to honor their legacy. I was thrilled to pose for pictures with three Tuskegee Airmen. I am posting a picture for each entry in this miniseries. This is  Tuskegee Airman Charles Cooper with me. Along with Hannibal Cox and Charles McGee, Charles Cooper shares the distinction of having flown combat missions as a fighter pilot in WWII, the Korean War and Vietnam.

Tuskegee Airmen, Part 1 – Tuskegee Airmen, Part 2
Tuskegee Airmen, Part 3 – Tuskegee Airmen, Part 4

Part one: overview of the Tuskegee Airmen and the Red Tails movie

The Tuskegee Airmen were the first African-American aerial combat unit. Deployed in Europe during WWII, they painted the tails of their planes red and became known as the Red Tails. To the Americans, they were the Red Tail Angels. To the Germans, they were the Red Tail Devils. To all of us, they are heroes who sought a Double Victory: victory in the war abroad and victory over prejudice, segregation and Jim Crow laws at home.

Red Tails is the Lucasfilm movie about the Tuskegee Airmen. It will be released this Friday, January 20. Go see it opening weekend! If your students are old enough, seeing the movie could be an extra credit assignment. (In the interest of fairness, provide a free extra credit opportunity: a report on the Red Tails.)

Red Tails is an action movie. Rather than dramatize how the Tuskegee Airmen began with a civil rights struggle for equality in military service, the movie opens with their most dramatic and successful missions: protecting B-17 Flying Fortress bombers.

Bombers were unwieldy and vulnerable. They were slow and they had to fly steady. They couldn’t avoid the flak and they were shot down at an alarming rate. Fighter pilots charged with protecting them would chase kills to make Ace or simply flee the incoming fire.

Not the Tuskegee Airmen. The Red Tails never left their bombers and consequently never lost a bomber. These courageous pilots flew through the flak and stayed with their charge. The bomber groups requested the Red Tails because of their outstanding track record. Few of the bombers knew the pilots protecting them were black.

Be sure to visit the website for Red Tails. Your students will love the dogfight simulation. You will enjoy showing them the history of the Red Tails at the airfield base section of the site.

This past weekend, I was unbelievably excited to meet Tuskegee Airmen in an event to honor their legacy. I was thrilled to pose for pictures with three Tuskegee Airmen. I will post one picture for each entry in this miniseries.

Here I am with Lt. Col. Robert Ashby, a Tuskegee Airman. After graduating from the cadet program in 1945, he went on to have an illustrious career in the military, serving in the occupation of Japan, the Korean conflict, and finally in England, retiring as a lieutenant colonel in 1965. Lt. Col. Ashby was the first black captain for Frontier Airlines. He was also the first black pilot to reach mandatory retirement age (60 years) with a major airline. He was the only Tuskegee Airman hired by a scheduled airline. Read a short autobiography here. Read more about Lt. Col. Ashby’s military career on this fact sheet from Luke Air Force Base.

*Incidentally, Luke AFB is home of the Emerald Knights, one of my dad’s old squadrons and the one I remember most clearly. They were based at Homestead AFB near Miami when my dad flew with them. Visit my about the author page and scroll down to see a photo of my dad’s last flight.

Tuskegee Airmen, Part 1 – Tuskegee Airmen, Part 2
Tuskegee Airmen, Part 3 – Tuskegee Airmen, Part 4

Students love to learn about Martin Luther King, Jr., but his achievements seem inaccessible to them. For kids, Dr. King was a fully-formed civil rights leader who always knew just what to do.

You can inspire children by teaching them about Dr. King’s school days. Then they will understand that he had to face obstacles, study, and learn. Kids feel so powerless sometimes—it’s good to show them that famous people were once children, and that everyone was a beginner at some point.

You and your class would enjoy taking Valerie Strauss’s MLK Quiz: His unorthodox education. Here are some no-context tidbits to get kids interested:

Did you know Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. …

> Was kicked out of school? (Okay, so it was kindergarten, and it was only because he was too young. Got your attention, though!)

> Was called an underachiever by his college professors?

> skipped two grades?

> thought about studying law or medicine?

In my book, Double Switched, the kids in Mr. Hoker’s class pick the subject of  African-American history for a group  project.  Connor and Tyler get their topics switched around when their presentation doesn’t go as planned: Connor talks about his dad’s experiences growing up during the desegregation years in the south, and Tyler talks about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as a leader of the civil rights movement.   Their classmates are thoroughly confused about who did what.  I bet you will enjoy the double switch — I certainly could see it happening in a real classroom!

I am pleased to announce the release of the third installment in the Buckley School Books: Double Switched. It’s about Connor, who knows he will be a Major League Baseball star—if he can just get through sixth grade.

Connor’s dad says make straight A’s or no baseball—but that’s not so easy when Connor has been Double Switched. Switched ballparks, switched classes, switched baseball positions—the bases are loaded with problems for Connor. Can he live up to his dad’s high standards? Would his hero Jackie Robinson approve of the choices Connor makes?

Double Switched is loads of fun, with action and comic misadventure. There is also a serious side. When Connor’s dad talks about growing up in the desegregated South, he draws on stories my mom told me about life during the Civil Rights movement. In Double Switched, I honor my mom’s childhood heroes: Cheryl and Eloise, two brave girls who integrated her junior high school in Montgomery, Alabama.

Inspired by his heroes, Connor sets out to address an inequality staring him in the face—his younger sister Nisha’s experience with softball. For Nisha, everything is less-than: poorly maintained fields require endless fundraising to fix up, poorly attended games give her no opportunity to shine. Connor, Nisha and friends put on a Boys Against Girls exhibition game to bring awareness and needed funds to level the playing field.

I hope you enjoy Double Switched. Visit the official Double Switched website for fun activities and features created by the kids in the book. (My favorite is You are the Umpire, but I think you will also like Chris’s Southern Recipes and Baseball Superstitions.)

In honor of The Muppets, released November 23, I offer several applications of Muppets to the classroom.  Some suggestions are actually good ideas.  Others have no basis in sound educational theory…but I’m not saying which are which!

Part One covered the 3Rs: Reading, ‘Riting, and ‘Rithmetic.  Now for the really fun stuff—everything else!

Science: Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker have given us so much.  From elevator shoes to make “short, stubby people like Beaker here” taller to alchemy gone bad (turning gold into cottage cheese), these hapless scientists demonstrate what NOT to do in the lab.  They provide fodder for endless discussion on ethics in scientific experiments.  If Beaker could talk, he might have something to say about subjects’ rights!

Social Studies: only on the Muppets can Sly be your guide to Roman history.  My students love to watch him as a singing gladiator in a Muppet recreation of the Coliseum.  Cross curricular connection: if Sylvester Stallone and the lion can agree to disagree, even going so far as to sing Gershwin’s classic “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off,” can’t we stop poking our neighbors with erasers?  Click here and watch the whole thing or skip to 5 minute mark for the gladiator number.

Music: Obviously, The Muppet Show is full of music, but I think a special shout-out should go to the Muppet Bohemian Rhapsody that catapulted them back onto the World Wide Web stage.  It’s brilliant!  Beaker’s Ode to Joy and Habanera are fun, too!  Also, don’t miss the Muppet band Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, shown here singing Rockin’ Robin in a tree.

Character Education: I just love to use the classic “Why Can’t We Be Friends” number when my class devolves into pointless squabbles.  The number releases tension and students are singing instead of bickering!  (Note: this only works with minor, sibling-type squabbles.  Serious problems need to be taken seriously.)  Cross curricular connection: try to name all the soldiers and battles referenced in this ultimate conflict!

Health: “And now, the continuing stoooory of a quack who’s gone to the dogs,” opened Rowlf’s Veterinarians Hospital, which has many applications to the modern health classroom.  Where else can you encounter so many puns is so short a lesson?  Doctor Bob can help any patient, from a telephone to a train conductor.

We are thankful for the Muppets!

Mouse on the Mayflower is a good movie for teaching the classic Thanksgiving story—the kind that’s as much story as history.  As the title suggests, it’s a mouse’s eye view of the experience, from leaving England to the first Thanksgiving.  The movie focuses more on education than entertainment, so students will learn plenty about details like how the pilgrims repaired the Mayflower en route while still enjoying cartoonish fun.

Songs by Tennessee Ernie Ford are sprinkled throughout the movie.  On the whole, they are very good, but watch your kids snicker during the love song!  You might wonder why the pilgrims were singing love songs when the Puritans objected to such frivolity.  Oh, well.

The movie is definitely pro-pilgrim, which makes sense because William the mouse did sail across the Atlantic with them.  Conflict with the Native Americans (Indians in this movie) is presented with the view that there are buffoonish instigators on both sides.  The mice help to bring everyone together, of course.

Enjoy this for what it is—a nice 50 minute movie that effectively dramatizes the Thanksgiving story.  Your students will like it!

Note: this movie is currently not available on DVD, but you can buy it cheap as a used VHS.

“In Flanders fields the poppies blow between the crosses…”

Now we call it Veterans Day, but it used to be known as Armistice Day, marking the cessation of hostilities on the western front on “the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.”

Veterans Day is the perfect time to share with your students the famous poem of World War I, “In Flanders Fields.”  This haunting poem vividly captures the scene at the Second Battle of Ypres.  It was written by Col. John McCrae, a Canadian physician treating soliders at the battle.  He was particularly affected by the death of a young friend and former student, Lt. Alexis Helmer of Ottawa.  Lt. Helmer was buried in the cemetery outside McCrae’s dressing station, and the doctor performed the funeral ceremony in the absence of the chaplain.

Col. McCrae wrote “In Flanders Fields” during one of his breaks.  Legend has it that he rejected the poem, but that a fellow officer sent it to be considered for publication.  The poem became hugely popular.  Canadian professor and humanitarian Moina Michael composed a poem inspired by “In Flanders Fields” and vowed to always wear a red poppy as a symbol of remembrance of those who served in the war.  After the war, she taught a class of disabled veterans and pursued the idea of selling silk poppies to raise funds to assist disabled veterans.

You and your students will enjoy the picture book In Flanders Fields: The Story of the Poem by John McCrae.  This beautifully illustrated book tells the story far better than a blog post ever could.

Note: to understand the poem, students need to know that poppies are opiates that cause people to sleep.  Poppies, particularly blood-red poppies, have long been used as symbols of death and sleep.  In Greek and Roman myths, poppies were used as offerings to the dead.  I describe an image that’s easy for children to understand—the Wicked Witch of the West casting poppies in the fields as Dorothy et.al. approached the Wizard of Oz. 

Download my worksheet (pdf) about “In Flanders Fields.”

Read on to enjoy this beautiful and haunting poem.

In Flanders Fields
by Col. John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
      Between the crosses, row on row,
   That mark our place; and in the sky
   The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
   Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
         In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
   The torch; be yours to hold it high.
   If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
         In Flanders fields.

This year, try a New Orleans theme for your Halloween/Fall Festival party.  You can work in geography, history, culture, and Halloween fun.

I did this last year and I can tell you that both the kids and parents just loved it.  It was a nice modification of traditional Halloween-at-school activities.  Parents appreciated the educational angle and they learned something, too.

I grabbed everyone’s attention by showing them that the Disney Haunted Mansion is in New Orleans Square.  I told them that the Disney Haunted Mansion movie is set in New Orleans, too.

Once I had everyone’s attention, I showed them a New Orleans PowerPoint I created.  You can click to download & share it, too (large file: 3+ MB).  It shows pictures of New Orleans to help get everyone in the mood.  I downloaded the Disney “Grim Grinning Ghosts” Haunted Mansion song along with some classic New Orleans jazz to play while we looked at the pictures.

Everyone loved learning about the New Orleans jazz funeral.  I told the children how it evolved from African funeral customs.  A New Orleans jazz band plays a sad song or dirge on the way to the cemetery, and happy tunes for the procession out.  Click here to learn more about the New Orleans jazz funeral.  Here is a sample:

Eileen Southern in The Music of Black Americans: A History wrote, “On the way to the cemetery it was customary to play very slowly and mournfully a dirge, or an ‘old Negro spiritual’ such as ‘Nearer My God to Thee,’ but on the return from the cemetery, the band would strike up a rousing, ‘When the Saints Go Marching In,’ or a ragtime song such as ‘Didn’t He Ramble.’  Sidney Bechet, the renowned New Orleans jazzman, after observing the celebrations of the jazz funeral, stated, “Music here is as much a part of death as it is of life.”

Because I teach third grade, I don’t explain how the New Orleans above-ground cemeteries are necessary so that the bodies don’t wash out on the streets during floods.  This would be very interesting to older students, though.  For third graders,  I  show  pictures of the beautiful New Orleans cemeteries, famous cultural landmarks of the city.

Make sure to teach the kids about New Orleans food, like jambalaya and po’boys.  Explain that po’boy sandwiches can be any simple filling in bread, but that most people think of a shrimp po’boy.   My mom said that when she lived near New Orleans, red beans and rice was everybody’s Monday dinner because Monday was laundry day and the mother was too busy to cook something difficult.  Practical details like that help history and culture come alive for students.

Parents and students alike are very interested in my story about the New Orleans streetcars.  I explained that if you ride the car to the end of the line, the driver will have everybody stand up so he can reverse the seat backs.  In that way, you always ride facing forward.  Click here to see the concept.  The picture is part of my New Orleans PowerPoint presentation.

For a literacy connection, I recommend reading the New Orleans Magic Tree House book A Good Night for Ghosts.  Your students will enjoy learning about New Orleans and Louis Armstrong.  The book touches very, very lightly on segregation.  You can expand on that or wait for another learning opportunity, your choice.   (If you like, teach your students that Ruby Bridges integrated William Frantz Elementary in New Orleans.)  A Good Night for Ghosts shouldn’t be too scary for your class.  It has a mild ghost scene that turns out not to be ghosts after all, but Louis’s friends.

Happy Halloween!

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”

Emma Lazarus’s inspiring poem is engraved on a plaque at the Statue of Liberty.  Many people only know the famous ending, but reading the whole sonnet gives a much deeper meaning.

“The New Colossus” makes a wonderful memorization challenge.  Your students can handle it—my third graders sure did!

The title refers to the Colossus of Rhodes, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.  The Colossus of Rhodes was a huge statue of the titan Helios, constructed to celebrate Rhodes’ victory over Cyprus.

America’s Statue of Liberty is “The New Colossus,” symbolizing welcome, freedom and hope.

I hope you and your students will enjoy my teaching notes and vocabulary handout.  It gives background information and lays the poem and relevant vocabulary words side-by-side.  Having all this information on one sheet will help your students understand and memorize the poem.

Memorization tips:

1. Give a deadline:  Students will work harder if they have a deadline.  Memorize the poem alongside your students.  Offer a reasonable deadline—I chose two weeks—but you can tell students that if they don’t have it learned by then, they’ll get an extension.
2. Offer a reward.  My class’s reward was an ice cream sundae.  I expected about five students to take them time to memorize, but 35 students qualified! (Tip: when you’re making that many sundaes, save yourself the trouble of scooping and buy the little ice cream cups.)
3. Study and analyze the poem:  Students learn and memorize more effectively if they understand the material.  Work as a class to find examples of metaphor and symbolism.
4. Memorize in sections.  Begin with the most famous lines, “Give me your tired…”  Then, go back to the beginning and memorize in sections.  Practice each section over and over.  Don’t move on until you know that section cold.
5. Don’t worry about the lines.  Sometimes one thought continues onto another line.  Focus on meaning, not form.
6. Memorize with your students.  When you undertake to memorize this yourself, you’ll come across tips and tricks to help your students.
7. Finally, appreciate the poem’s beauty.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

You can read about “The New Colossus” at Wikipedia.  Be sure to click and read about the Colossus of Rhodes.  Visit the Statue of Liberty’s official site, as well.

I always imagine John Adams as the nerdy know-it-all of the Founding Fathers, the guy who was never quite cool*. Nothing illustrates this so well as his earnest prediction that July 2^nd was gonna be a big day:

“The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.”— July 3, 1776 letter to Abigail

Americans celebrate the date on the document, not the date the resolution was approved in a closed session of Congress. We all know that we’ll be partying on the Fourth. Let’s take the Second to do our homework and learn a little about the holiday.

Because the Census Bureau is all about the fun: peruse their Fun Facts about the Fourth of July. I liked their comparison of who will be celebrating in the USA: over 311 million now versus 2.5 million then. Also, did you know that more than 1 in 4 hot dogs consumed on the Fourth of July originated from Iowa?

View the Declaration of Independence from the Archives web site.

Read John Adams’ letter describing the 1777 Fourth of July celebration.

That treasure trove of Internet research, Wikipedia, has a bom-diggety Fourth of July page that’s a lot of fun.

*My basis for this assumption: the “Sit Down, John!” number from the musical 1776 . This is such a fun movie. I get a kick out of watching Gwyneth’s mom as Martha Jefferson. There are powerful moments, too. The best is “Molasses to Rum to Slaves.” (Note: according to an Amazon review, this song is not in the director’s cut DVD.)

“The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and free laborer.”—Read by Major General Granger to the people of Texas, June 19, 1865.

Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration of the end of slavery in the United States. On this day in 1865, the Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas with the news that the war was over and the slaves were now free.

I wish this date fell during the school year, because it would be so meaningful for students. Still, we can learn and celebrate today, take the lessons with us back to school.

How can you celebrate Juneteenth? Learn about the history, eat some good home cookin’ at your own Juneteenth party, and search for Juneteenth events in your area.

I highly recommend visiting Juneteenth.com, the comprehensive source for all things Juneteenth. You can learn more about Juneteenth at the Smithsonian, in this article that complements a special exhibit.