Our second grade teachers read "The Sneetches" by Dr. Seuss. And we have our own "Star belly Sneetch" day. Half of the class has stars on their bellies and they get all kinds of special treatment, while the others are treated unfairly ( trash duty, sharpening pencils, seat work instead of centers, etc..). Later in the day we have the kids switch roles. At the end of the day we discuss how they felt in both roles, watch the video of The Sneetches, and have a snack.
Also, the video "My Friend Martin" is really good too.
I have done this in the past and I think it really gets the point across. I take a brown egg and a white egg. We talk about how they are a like and different (color being the primary focus). Then we crack it open and talk about how we are all the same on the inside even though our outsides are a different color.
This is a lengthy lesson, but
Posted by: NewTeach22 #131659
I read the biography of MLK by David A Adler. I like that the best because it introduces the Civil Rights Movement without scaring the kids and did a KWL for that (with chart paper and post-its). Then we brainstormed a lot of words or phrases about MLK and wrote a Peron Poem. I got the format from a poetry book I have, but it might be available on the Internet.
As an extension to the book you could also do a human timeline to assess what they remember... print out information that was in the book and have a student hold each page, then scramble them around until they figure out what happened first, second, etc. My kids love it!
If you have access to the computer, there are video clips of Martin Luther King delivering his "I Have a Dream" speech. You could certainly take the theme of dreams and have the kids do some writing or poetry about theirs. There also is the wonderful book Martin's Big Words. They could do poetry using some of the words in the book. Good luck to you. I know observations are nerve-wracking.There also might be some good activities listed on the homepage. They have different categories, and I think MLK might be one of them, but I'm not sure.
