Black History Month 2009

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Black History Month is celebrated every October in Britain.

The aims are to:

• Promote knowledge of Black History and experience.

• Disseminate information on positive Black contributions to British Society.

• Heighten the confidence and awareness of Black people in their cultural heritage.

Acknowledging and celebrating Black History each October encourages us all to focus and to consider extending our curriculum and extracurricular activities. However, it is important that we do this throughout the whole year and not just in one allocated month. With this in mind, we are launching two projects starting in the month of October but to continue throughout the year.

The Gloucestershire "Freedom Quilt"  Project

The idea is based on the Underground Railway Movement where slaves used secret messages sewn into patchwork quilts to assist them in escaping from the South of America to Canada. We will produce our own patchwork quilt made by primary and secondary schools, parents, grandparents, The Black Elders, The African Caribbean Association, Cool Running’s, St. Catherine’s ...

We are hoping to link all the patches, produce the quilt and display the final result around the County by the end of the academic year.

Anyone interested in contributing please contact READS and we will provide all you need.

St Catherine's Court residents - under the guidance of Donna Woolf Sekinger (Warden) have been working on this over the summer - and produced our first patchwork squares!

View these here

Fishpool Schools Black History Month Radio Project

Fishpool secondary schools have been invited to work with The Everyman Theatre and Radio Gloucester to produce a script which will then be presented as a play, assisted by Ola Animashawun from the Royal Court Theatre.

This marvelous opportunity has been opened up to our 6 schools from which 10-15  lucky students will be selected and will then meet at The Picturedrome, Barton Street during the October half term. Here they will receive expert advice, training and support from a professional script writer. Following this, they will talk about their experiences on Radio and their thoughts, writings and script will be put on the website.

ACA Saturday School

Kay Exton from the ACA Saturday School is focusing on Science and the celebration of Black Scientists. Anyone interested in supporting Kay should contact her through ACA or READS. It would be good for our young children to meet real local scientists: pharmacists, archaeologists, physicists, pathologists, doctors .... Positive role models and providing alternative career thoughts can only help to address imbalance and promote high aspirations.

Photo: Mae Jemison - an astronaut scientist. Read biographies of Black Scientists with accompanying worksheets on the EMAS4Success website. Download a BHM Black Scientist Trail from Breazshare - and do your own school competition!

BCAP and BPAP

Following the launches of BPAP ( Black Pupils Achievement Programme) and BCAP (Black Children’s Achievement Project) last year we hope that schools will use the material provided by the National Strategies ...

Excellence and Enjoyment: learning and teaching for Black children in the primary years

Ensuring the attainment of Black pupils

And also the resources we produced to enhance understanding and promote learning:

"Reflections on Jamaica"

These DVDs with accompanying workbooks are suitable for both primary and secondary schools and are the result of two in depth interviews with Howard Isaacs and Robert Crawford. The two men talked about their upbringing in Jamaica, their schooling, family values, aspirations and roles as teachers. To accompany these, two handbooks of worksheets have been produced for schools.  The handbooks include a synopsis of Jamaican history, a set of comprehension questions for each chapter and a range of cross curricular activities. They provide a very useful resource for teachers and indeed anyone interested in the inspiring narrations of two educationalists from Jamaica.

Filming with Fishpool Students

We are planning to produce a Pupil Voice DVD for our Gloucestershire schools. Our pupils will be interviewed about their school experiences and their achievements. We are looking forward to exploring their views and their opinions on education, culture, language, home life, aspirations, barriers etc. We are looking forward to meeting and filming some of our young people and then sharing our findings.

Watch out…we are coming your way!

Finally, we will be continuing our podcast work with members of the Black Community. We are keen to produce a selection of recordings of poetry, prose recording in authentic accents/dialects, so our pupils can hear and appreciate work by people such as Benjamin Zephaniah, Alice Walker and others.

So, enjoy Black History Month, get involved in the range of activities around you but remember...don’t stop the interest when October ends!

Download a display for Black History Month from the 'Instant Displays' website here.

Follow the links below for more resources from previous years. Why not use some of the previous competitions and quizzes in your school, and give prizes?

2008 Fishpool Schools Black History Month Competition - "Our Local Heroes"

2007   Bicentenary of the Abolition of Slavery Act: Resources, websites, maps for studying slavery.

2006 Download a new version of Chekov's play 'The Three Sisters', and 3 different project packs for KS3 .

2005 View a 'wall of quotes' - can you match the authors to the quotation?

2004 'Famous Black Heroes' - Run a school art or writing competition with these resources for KS1 KS2 and KS3.