Friday, February 10, 2012

I know I'm way late but.....MLK fun!

I have to get better about posting more often. It seems like I'll post everyday for a few days and then I won't at all for a month. I guess that's the life of a first year teacher! I can only do what I can do!

I'll start with MLK. We did an awesome study of Martin Luthe King Jr. and his life. The kids were absolutely fascinated! My school is not very diverse, and my students could not believe what it would be like to live in a world where everyone wasn't treated fairly. So I did a little activity. Out of my 15 students, I picked out a physical trait that only a few of them had, that cannot be changed....dark brown eyes. I did not tell the students what the trait was, but picked out these three students and gave them a giant bag of candy and told them to go wild. Needless to say the other students' mouths were watering.

They soon figured out that the reason these students got the candy was because they had dark brown eyes, and were all complaining to me that it wasn't fair that these students got all this candy and they didn't. I asked them if eye color is something that they can change about themselves. They said no, and pouted about not getting any candy ;). I told them that this was what MLK was fighting for. White people and African-American people could not change their skin color, and they were treated differently despite that. The kids TOTALLY got it! I was so thrilled and it was a great introduction to MLK and his dream.

We read Martin's Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It is the best picture book I have ever read about MLK. It included every important fact about his life, but the history was totally understandable for my students. We also watched the movie version of this book on Discovery Education (the most awesome website ever created).

I used Erin Eberhart's Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Mini Unit that I downloaded for FREE on TPT! After we read Martin's Big Words, we created her tree map activity. We completed her "I Have A Dream" writing activity. They loved it! They had so much fun with his unit!

We had a great week of learning about a staple in US history!

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