Celebrating ‘Black History Day’

On the 29 January pupils at Churcher’s College Junior School and Nursery celebrated Black History Day as part of their home learning.

In Years 1 to 4, in their registration tasks, pupils thought about what it meant to be fair as a warm-up towards discussions of inequality and racism later in the day.

Years 1 to 3 learnt about some important black figures in history, including Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Junior. Together with Year 3, they were asked to 'walk in the shoes' of Rosa Parks by writing a letter as her, explaining the thoughts behind her actions. They were also asked to copy the style of Alma Thomas in creating abstract art. 

Additionally, pupils found out about the arrival of the Windrush Generation to the UK and Year 4 wrote moving diary entries about the culture shock children experienced on arrival.

In Year 4, pupils were taught about the meaning of slavery through the story of the ‘Freedom Quilt’ and contributed to the Upper School combined art project.

Years 5 and 6 started their day by considering their dreams.  We had some inspirational answers to the question – 'What is your dream for yourself, your community and the world?' Oli H in Year 6 (our History Monitor) then led an assembly on Martin Luther King. The children with blue eyes were selected and asked to vote on whether the rest of the children should have an additional task. Not surprisingly they found this process unfair, and this enabled them to consider issues pertaining to segregation and rights. The assembly concluded with a short video by Kid President and the children’s ideas of the need for equality for all.

Pupils completed an English comprehension activity on Martin Luther King’s life and in music, Miss Stone introduced the children to the Mwamba Children’s Choir and their version of “Siyahamba”. They learnt how to sing the song and performed it to a backing track. We then worked on making a newspaper of the key moments in black history that changed the world.  The children were presented with some source material and selected a character from history to research and we were delighted to include a range of people in our newspaper including Crispus Attucks, Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Hank Aaron, Barack Obama and John Kent. 

In Art, the children were introduced to the idea of quilts being maps to the underground railroad and the route to freedom through secret communication, each patch having a special meaning and telling part of the journey. We read the book ’Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt‘ and the children then thought about what freedom meant to them. They each drew a ‘freedom square’ and then we learnt about the other traditional squares in the following Art lesson.

To end the day, we completed a STEAM challenge based on Katherine Johnson and her book ‘Counting with Katherine’. The children learnt about her inspirational story and the calculations that she completed to help land Apollo 13. They then had to design their own space capsule and modify it to slow its descent.  It was lovely to see the children’s attempts and videos of their experiments.

The children really enjoyed their action-packed day and it was lovely to read their positive feedback such as “I really enjoyed Friday and it made me think about the world in a different way.” (Scarlett, Year 6).