Students engage in a four-week learning experience focused on designing Innovator Trading Cards that highlight lesser-known Black American innovators—past and present—whose ideas, creativity, problem-solving, and leadership shaped American history and community life. Each week introduces a new theme aligned to a color, helping learners recognize patterns in how people contribute to communities. This activity focuses on learning about innovators, closely reading informational texts, and creating trading cards that will later be used in a collaborative game during Week 4.

This is the first of two activities in the Innovator Trading Card Collection:

Activity 1 focuses on the theme of the week, learning about the innovators and their influence, and designing the innovator trading cards.

Activity 2 focuses on facilitating the associated game to reinforce learning.

In this culminating activity, learners use their completed Innovator Trading Cards to play two connected games: first, trading cards to recognize shared themes, and second, applying their learning to identify which types of innovators are best suited to solve community challenges. This activity reinforces collaboration, evidence-based reasoning, and the understanding that communities benefit from many kinds of innovation working together.

This is the second of two activities in the Innovator Trading Card Collection:

Activity 1 focuses on the theme of the week, learning about the innovators and their influence, and designing the innovator trading cards.

Activity 2 focuses on facilitating the associated game to reinforce learning.