Black History Month & Women's History Month Challenges
Monday, April 7, 2014, 4:16 p.m.Rosedale Library
Black History Month & Women's History Month Challenges
Recently, our Rosedale neighborhood youth accepted the trivia challenges offered and surpassed their own expectations! Referencing several library books such as A Kid's Guide To African-American History, Black Firsts: 4,000 Ground-breaking and Pioneering Historical Events, and Founding Mothers: Remembering The Ladies and various websites, I created a series of educational trivia quizzes to encourage youth to use their inherent "fact-finding" (research) skills that most didn't realize that they had and to showcase their knowledge of local and national Black History for the month of February and Women's History for the month of March.I targeted my pitch to several "Rosedale Regulars"--- 'Tweens (age 9 to 13) who come in daily and were at the time idly waiting to use the computers for their usual video games, music videos and social media photo-surfing. After their initial grumblings of how they didn't know how to find the answers and how long it would take to finish, I succeeded in recruiting several youth to take on the challenges. Most of our young participants were pleasantly surprised at their own achievements!
In February, Rosedale 'Tweens had a choice from three different types of Black History trivia quizzes to complete in order to win a free book prize and, as a bonus, a Chipotle coupon! The most popular quiz,"Our Time to Shine," (pictured) consisted of fluffy clouds that noted events in Black History relevant to a young person's interests printed on them and happy sunshine faces with dates printed on them. Each cloud fact had to be matched with its corresponding sunshine date in order to win.The participants were told that they could
work individually or in teams of two and that they could use any combination of reference tools including the Internet, library databases, non-fiction books or a "parent-assistant" to find any answers they were unsure of. The promise of tasty Chipotle proved to be a significant lure, and I am pleased to announce that 15 youth completed in this challenge!In March, Rosedale 'tweens had a choice from two different types of Women's History trivia quizzes to complete in order to win a free book prize. The more advanced quiz called "Ladies First," consisting of images of some of the more well-known First Ladies. Below them are a list of specific ordinal numbers.
Flip over the photo to find the woman's name and a notable fact about her, along with the name of her husband. Children were challenged to match the First Lady photo to the ordinal number which corresponds to when she and her husband served in the White House. My rallying efforts yielded a number of participants whom I coached as they worked on the challenges and received much-deserved book prizes for their participation.
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-- Tammeric Itson Scurry, Children's Library Associate