Utilizing The Curriculum

Utilizing the Making Freedom Curriculum

The traditional historical narrative forming the basis of content for secondary students often relegates the study of African American history to separate units on slavery or a focus on the struggle for civil rights.

Making Freedom counters these topics as the primary focus and offers teachers and students exposure to exciting and informed scholarship on over 400 years of history, thus strengthening the content across time and adjusting the lens through which African American history is viewed and understood to include rich cultural memories, key figures and achievements as well as stories of dignity and joy. Making Freedom is intended for use as a resource in all American history classes at the middle and high school levels.  There are also opportunities for lessons to reach the upper elementary Grade 5 age group which have been identified throughout the curriculum.  

Innovative and intellectually compelling, these curriculum materials easily fit into conventional “scope and sequence” plans and are aligned to state standards.  Lessons are inclusive of contemporary and relevant connections to differentiate and extend the learning in your classroom. As you delve into the lesson topics you will find that they provide a rich introduction to historical topics, with both teacher content knowledge for you as the educator,  as well as for building student context knowledge for your students to have an entry point. Each topic also provides you with the following components:

• Student Objectives– The objectives are actionable and tied specifically to both to the  knowledge and skills students will access and utilize
• Key Vocabulary & Key Questions – That can be both pre-taught and reflected upon throughout the course of the teaching topic
• Activities with corresponding primary source access – Each teaching topic has multiple activities for educators to select from that to best meet the needs and timeframes of their classroom.
• Supplementary materials for additional research and differentiation – The beauty of history is that it is always being made and there are infinite pathways to follow! Therefore, we have provided multiple resources you can pursue further beyond the scope of our curriculum from many trusted partners and sources.

This curriculum is structured by themes and units but can also be sourced chronologically. However, attention has been paid to ensure that materials can be identified and coupled together flexibly by educators .  The curriculum is flexibly designed, allowing you to use a single lesson, a collection of topics or a unit to form a powerful vehicle for bringing the history of African American life to middle and high school classrooms. As the expert in your classroom, you are able to move through each unit as a structured whole to explore the fullness of the events and figures of the timeframe or take one focus in history and explore it across multiple timeframes.  The units are as follows: