Saturday, September 11th, 2021, marks the 20th anniversary of the largest terrorist attack in history which killed nearly 3,000 people. As adults, we can clearly remember what we were doing that day, where we were when we heard the news, and we can think about its impact on our daily lives and our nation as a whole.
As an elementary classroom teacher, it has always been my goal to make sure my students knew about this day and what it meant for our country, especially since our students weren’t even born when this happened. I do this through the use of picture books, classroom discussions, and short animated films from resources like BrainPop and 9/11 Memorial.
Here are some resources to help you introduce and explain this event to your students.
Informative Text
This is a short informative text piece I compiled to help my students understand what happened on September 11th. We used it as a source of evidence to respond to the prompt: Why is it important to remember the heroes and victims of September 11th? You can find this informational text for free in my shop. After reading text, we had a class discussion about the importance of American heroes. We compiled our ideas on an anchor chart that we later used to write our responses using RACE.
Writing Letters to Heroes
A lot of my students’ families are in the military, and many of them knew about September 11th. We talked about how important it is to recognize our military heroes as well as our everyday heroes and how a short note can go a long way. We used my Community Hero Notes to write letters to military personnel and our community heroes.
Saved by the Boats
In addition to using the informational text piece, I also read aloud “Saved by the Boats.” This added more to our discussion and helped us understand how civilians played a huge role in helping victims of 9/11. You can find Saved by the Boats here on Amazon.
Brain Pop Videos and 9/11 Memorial
BrainPop.com also has an informative video that helped us cite more evidence for our written responses. This video is geared for upper elementary and it really helped students understand the totality of the situation. It connected the story and informational text and led to a deep discussion of why we remember 9/11. 9/11 Memorial also has an array of resources and lesson plans to help teach and discuss the events of 9/11 with your students.
Patriot Day Assembly
Things look a lot different now with Covid protocols, but in past years we would hold a Patriot Day Assembly. We invited local community heroes (police, fire, military, medical professionals, etc.) to our school to honor them. We had students read from our special Patriot Day script which explained the attacks on 9/11 as well as why we honor our local heroes today and every day. Click here for the free script on Google Docs that you can edit.
Recognizing the importance of remembering September 11th will remind us that we “will never forget.”
