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1. Have students think of a person they know who collects. What does that person collect? How many objects are in the collection? Have students interview the person to find out when, why and how the collection got started. What does this person plan to do with the collection?
   
   
2. Have a Black History Treasure Hunt. Assign students to find various items, i.e. books, articles, letters, pictures, documents. Use the school library, a church or community library or (with the assistance of parents and teachers), the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture as resources. Some examples are: a picture of poetess Phyllis Wheatley, sheet music of a Negro Spiritual or popular song of their choice, a picture of Egyptian Queen Tiye, a book of poems by Langston Hughes, a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation, an article on African Americans in theater and/or film, a letter dated before 1950.
   
   
3. As a classroom project assign different students to different tasks:
   
   

   list each item with a description and date it was collected, assign a number to the item check each item and record the condition of it, i.e., torn or soiled prepare a place to store the object safely title each object and write a paragraph about it have students give a brief talk about the collection or a specific item display objects with labels and have the class write a critical review of the exhibit

   
   Ask these questions: Is the display/collection interesting? Why or Why not? Does it look neat? Is it colorful? What can the viewer learn from it?
   
   
4. Have students start scrapbooks of their personal histories. They should include: a family tree, photographs of themselves and family, letters, drawings and other things that interest them. Have a classroom discussion about what each student collects. Have a Show-and-Tell series for students to share their collections with the class.
   
   
5. Schomburg devoted his life to uncovering the record of the Africans' past "to restore what slavery took away." Have students write a report on Arturo (Arthur) Schomburg. Each report should include something special the student has learned by studying the life of Schomburg.
   
   
6. Have a classroom discussion on the African influence in Puerto Rico and other parts of the Caribbean, i.e., music, dance, visual arts, food, etc. Have each student bring or demonstrate an example of one of these. Include in this discussion the similarities of the effects of the African slave trade and colonialism.