A carefully prepared unit on Rosa Parks and the bus boycott, a great part of a wider civil rights or black history unit. The sequence takes students through the bus boycott story to the writing of a diary from the perspective of Rosa and/or James Blake. Lesson step outline included, story sequencing cards, Images, 3 different levels of text, 2 different scaffolding sheets on perspectives and 2 diary writing pages.

Communicative or individual activity including 3 different sheets of Alien code, the answer key, and a key to help students with the decoding. 3 sets of Alien code with a key. Leave the code or messages in a 'space ship' for students to find and let them find the other part elsewhere or simply explain that you 'found these strange messages at home'. Students either communicate to decode the messages or work individually, depending what you want them to do the activity for. Sheet 1 are motivational 'fortune cookie' style messages. Sheet 2 include a treasure hunt based on 5 clues. Sufficiently generic to work in any school. Sheet 3 is a letter from the aliens requesting help. Students decode the message and then the teacher produces a list of whatever the students need to do in order to help them (for example, complete their maths homework, or find the answer to a difficult question.). The children (grades 2-8) I've done this activity with have loved it!