brown girl dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

 Woodson, J. (2014). brown girl dreaming. New York: Nancy Paulsen Books.
brown girl dreaming is the winner of the Coretta Scott King award.
The Coretta Scott King Book Awards are given annually to outstanding African American authors and illustrators of books for children and young adults that demonstrate an appreciation of African American culture and universal human values.  The award commemorates the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and honors his wife, Mrs. Coretta Scott King, for her courage and determination to continue the work for peace and world brotherhood.
The Awards are given in author and illustrator categories; honor recipients may also be named. Both the Author and Illustrator Winner recipients receive a plaque and $1,000.
Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement. Touching and powerful, each poem is both accessible and emotionally charged, each line a glimpse into a child’s soul as she searches for her place in the world. Woodson’s eloquent poetry also reflects the joy of finding her voice through writing stories, despite the fact that she struggled with reading as a child. Her love of stories inspired her and stayed with her, creating the first sparks of the gifted writer she was to become.
Lesson plans:

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Objectives

Students will understand the following: 1. Beyond the famous leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, ordinary men and women struggled for their beliefs. 2. All the participants—famous and not so famous—deserve to have their stories told. 3. Older people have a responsibility to pass on these stories to younger people.

Materials

For this lesson, you will need: • Multiple reference sources that treat the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s

Procedures

1. Explain to students that forty and fifty years after the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, some participants are very well remembered and some less so. Some participants have been written about frequently; others, even others who lost their lives in the struggle, have received scant recognition. Tell students that for a class project they are going to do research and create a single volume to be titledA Children’s Encyclopedia of the Civil Rights Movement.The book, which will be for first-graders, will include alphabetical articles about some of the leaders and the ordinary people who made a difference in the movement. 2. Ask students to describe the characteristics of an encyclopedia that they use in the classroom, in the library, or at home. 3. Ask students how they will have to modify the characteristics of an encyclopedia so that first-graders can understand and enjoy one. For example, bring out the point that the writers of theChildren’s Encyclopediawon’t be able to use a term such aspoll taxwithout explaining it. 4. Ask students to suggest names of people they think belong in their encyclopedia. Start a list, which eventually may include some or all of the following names. The asterisks indicate people about whom much material exists; it will be harder but not impossible to find some information about the players without asterisks. (You may want to set maximum word counts for entries on the more well-known and well-documented subjects.) Ralph Abernathy Oliver Brown James Chaney* Eldridge Cleaver* Medgar Evers* Andrew Goodman* Fannie Lou Hamer Martin Luther King Jr.* Viola Greg Liuzzo Malcolm X* Thurgood Marshall* James Meredith Huey P. Newton A. Philip Randolph* Rosa Parks* Michael Schwerner* Bobby Seale Fred Shuttlesworth Emmett Till 5. Assign subjects to students. If you want students to work together in small groups, you can consider giving several subjects to each group. 6. Discuss with your students where they can find biographical information about their subjects: textbooks, nonfiction books of various kinds, already published encyclopedias, videos, Web sites. Indicate that wherever possible students should check more than one source for each person they are researching. 7. Go over the fundamentals of taking notes from other sources. Stress that the sentences and paragraphs in the students’ encyclopedia will have to be original—not quotations from other sources. 8. Another factor to consider before writing begins is format for the encyclopedia articles. In doing research, students will have found more biographical details about some subjects than others; they will have to decide whether to use blanks or question marks to indicate missing information. When birth and death dates and places are reported, consider the option of setting them off instead of running that information into the prose of the article. You may use the following format, for example: Martin Luther King Born [place] [date] Died [place] [date] [Main text of encyclopedia entry begins here.] Looking at encyclopedias you have available, discuss with students the option of starting an entry with a phrase rather than a complete sentence—for example: American cleric committed to nonviolent tactics during the Civil Rights Movement. 9. Set up a revising-editing-proofreading system so that both students and you have a chance to improve articles for the encyclopedia. Then consider having all the articles typed or word processed in the same type style and size, with the same line length, and paginated so that when bound, the end product will look professional. Ask your students for suggestions for the cover of the encyclopedia. If possible, make a copy of the finished encyclopedia for each student in your class. Work with first-grade teachers to create an opportunity for your students and the younger ones to meet and share the encyclopedia.