I am so excited to teach on MLK this year and inspire a whole new generation of students to dream big, advocate for those less fortunate, and participate in activities that help them look outside of themselves and experience the world around them. Have you ever read ‘I Have a Dream’ illustrated by Kadir Nelson? He is my ‘illustrator crush’. I just love his images! You will too once you check out a few of his books! We read lots of books about Martin as a boy, and even Martin as an adult! My students loved learning that he had a sense of humor and that he was a practical joker. They were surprised to hear that kids in Martin’s day didn’t have friends that weren’t their same color. They learned about sit-ins and bus boycotts. They learned about segregation too. And of course, when I said he was arrested…there were a few who already knew what that word meant.
When we started, we read lots of books and watched videos and You Tube Clips. Once we were done with that, we used thinking maps to help us organize our thoughts. The students started to transfer those thoughts to their draft sheets. We worked together to remember what things Dr. King did that helped African Americans. After our research and our note taking, we turned to beginning to draft our selection. Since we are writing an informational text, I went over what a topic sentence was, and we did that. Then the next day, we came back, and we used our graphic organizers and maps to help us frame our first few sentences on Dr. King’s life as a boy.
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