Happy Birthday Dr. King!!!

I feel it is so important to celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., his vision, and accomplishments.  This month has basically been dedicated to the man.  Not only that, I mention him throughout the year often.  However, January is a good time to remind students of his messages.  Here are some things that we have worked on the past couple of weeks since winter break.

Ok, fifth graders won't just read or listen to Dr. King's speech and totally get it.  They need background knowledge and guidance to understand the main messages.  Therefore, we listen to parts of the speech at a time, pause, reread & discuss, take notes, and continue.  This site is where I go to get the audio, since youtube is blocked at my school.  It also has words underneath if needed.  I feel breaking down the speech also allows kids to focus on each section at a time.  Here's a sample of how we marked the text: Marking up MLK's speech

After we do this, students answer questions on my classroom blog.  They may use the marked up speech to help remind them of what we discussed.

We also watch Jane Elliot's A Class Divided experiment.  A must see!!!  So much discussion can come out of this and students have great conversations about their feelings after watching it.  It's always interesting to see some of the kids start saying things like, "Yeah, I have blue eyes," during the video even after I give a brief background on what the purpose of Elliot's experiment was.  I definitely bring that up at the end and we discuss that. 

Another activity we do is the stereotype headband activity.  It helps kids see how labeling others affects the way we treat them.  This website gives a good idea of how to run the activity.  I make my headbands out out sentence strips.  NOTE: I am very careful about headband labels that I choose to use and who is wearing them.  Some kids can be very sensitive.  After they go around treating others as the label they see on the headband, we go around the room and see if each student can guess what their label says about them based on how others treated them.  Most can tell.

After we discuss, reflect, and write about the experiment, we do the activity again.  However, I switch the headbands and tell students that even though they can see what someone's label says, they are to try NOT to treat them any differently.  This is really tough for students and when we guess our label after this session, some can still figure out what their headband says, but  not all. 

Students also write dreams they have on all levels: themselves, family, school, country, and world.  Since there's five, it's a good beginning of the the day warm up writing activity for the week.  Here is a pdf of the document: Student Dreams

Anyway, I have always felt good vibes from kids after teaching these lessons.  I hope they can take the messages with them as we reiterate them throughout the year.