13 Guiding Principles in a Fifth Grade Classroom

Brian Stark, a fifth grade teacher at Lowell School, prepared his students for the Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action with a discussion of the differences between equality and equity. On Thursday, February 7, he led his students through the lesson Introduction to the Principles of the Black Lives Matter Movement.

Mr. Stark discussed the 13 guiding principles and gave his students a kid-friendly version of the 13 guiding principles.

Students highlighted the words that meant the most to them and began to create a “wordle” project, which creates a visual display of text that highlights words by frequency. To make their own wordle, students used words from the 13 guiding principles, choosing 3 big ideas, 7 fairly important words, and 10 - 15 less frequent words.