20 Day Blog Challenge: Day 1 Martin Luther King Jr.

I was catching up on my blog feeds this week and saw Kelly Hines' post about a 20 Day Blogging Challenge. I loved the idea so much that I shared the link with our year 2 Pinnacle Leaders in hopes that they would take on the challenge. Since I am their trainer, I figured what is good for them would be good for me to try as well and to add an instructional technology component as well. So here goes!

Day 1 Challenge:
Tell about a favorite book to share or teach. Provide at least one example of an extension or cross curricular lesson.

Since we are getting close to the celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr's birthday, I am going to share an activity that can be done with the picture book My Brother Martin: A Sister Remembers. Lesson would be for K-2 grade span and is based on a lesson from readwritethink.org. The book provides details of Martin Luther King Jr as a little boy growing up in the segregated South in the 1920s. As the story is read aloud with students, it is easy to make text to self connections with things students enjoy doing compared to Dr. King. Although students today may not have the segregation experiences of Dr. King, some may have the experience of bullies or even be excluded from activities or associations with people.

You could then have students draw images of things they enjoy doing and then times when they have been sad. Upload those images to VoiceThread and have students tell about the images. Their peers can then add comments right within VoiceThread.

If you need sentence starters for children, feel free to adapt these.

Let's make connections between your life and that of Martin Luther King, Jr. when he was about your age.

Martin Luther King, Jr. loved singing, music, reading, learning new things, and sharing his ideas with others. He was good at those things. I am good at _____________________________

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Martin's feelings were hurt when his white friends couldn't play with him anymore. At that time in the United States, black and white children couldn't go to school together or be friends. That made Martin sad. I was sad when ________________________________________

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