In today's society, students have difficulty envisioning a time when there were different schools, restaurants, bathrooms and water fountains - one for white people and another for black people. Students in my school look around and see other children of many races, colors and religions sitting beside them. When the fifth grade students at my school begin to study the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, they do not have a firm understanding of why it was so important and what a difference it made in our country.
This Track is intended to be an introductory experience for students to grasp the treatment of African-Americans that made the Civil Rights movement necessary. Through text and pictures, students will see how different society was just a short time ago. This Track will also work to give the students additional practice with informational reading and making inferences based on the text. MEAP scores have shown that as a weakness for our students.
To begin the Track, students will need to know how to use and navigate around the Internet using a web browser.

Objectives
This TrackStar is developed using the following benchmarks in the Michigan Curriculum Framework:
SOC1.2.LE.1
Summarize the key events in stories describing life from the past in their local community, the State of Michigan and other parts of the United States.
-Students will read and understand the information available in the web sites.
-Students will restate in their own words information found by answering questions on a teacher generated worksheet.
TEC.2.LE.1
Interpret, analyze and evaluate information with the assistance of technology (voice, data, video, graphics, etc.)
-Students will navigate successfully through the Track in one 55 minute period.
-Students will collect appropriate information from the available web sites.
Assessment
Student learning will be assessed by a teacher generated worksheet.