Grade 8 US History Civil Rights word search, scramble and crossword pu

Grade 8 US History Civil Rights word search, scramble and crossword puzzle

I made this Civil Rights Movement puzzle set for my 8th graders during our US History unit. The kids knew about Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks, but they kept mixing up key concepts like segregation and integration, and they had no idea what terms like "sit-in" or "civil disobedience" actually meant when we started digging into the movement's strategies and events . So I put together a word search, a word scramble, and a crossword using words like civil rights, segregation, integration, discrimination, protest, boycott, sit-in, march, equality, justice, freedom, vote, nonviolent, civil disobedience, and justice. I also made sure to include key figures and organizations like MLK, Rosa Parks, NAACP, CORE, and SCLC to help connect the vocabulary to the people and groups who shaped the movement .

The PDF is four pages. Three puzzles plus one answer key page. The word search works well for quiet time after a lecture or as a review activity before a test. The scramble gets them talking because they argue about the spelling of "discrimination" or whether "boycott" and "protest" are the same thing (they're not—a boycott is a specific type of economic protest) . The crossword I use for partners or as a review after we've covered the major events of the movement.

Works for 8th through 9th grade, especially for students who need extra practice with content-area vocabulary. Print and go. Sometimes I have early finishers pick one key term from the puzzles and write a sentence explaining its significance to the Civil Rights Movement on the back. The kids actually ask for these now.