Serendipity35

Teachers looking for new things to do for Martin Luther King Day (January 17) next week might find some ideas in these resources from Annenberg Learner.

"Egalitarian America," unit 20 of America's History in the Making, looks at the struggle for civil rights in the U.S. from the 1940s to the 1970s. Be sure to fully explore the unit's rich video, audio, and text resources. http://www.learner.org/courses/amerhistory/units/20/

Look back at the social movements of the 1960s and the work of Dr. King with A Biography of America program 24, "The Sixties." http://www.learner.org/biographyofamerica/prog24/  This program covers King's leadership in both the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam War protest.

View a picture of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom http://www.learner.org/amerpass/slideshow/archive_search.php?number=2254&fullsize=1 from the American Passages archive.

For Grades 6-8: Find an engaging lesson for teaching the book The Watsons Go to Birmingham--1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis. Look at workshop 5 of Teaching Multicultural Literature: A Workshop for the Middle Grades, http://www.learner.org/workshops/tml/workshop5/ and another lesson on the same novel in Making Meaning in Literature: A Video Library, Grades 6-8. http://www.learner.org/libraries/makingmeaning/makingmeaning/dramatic/

For Grades K-5: In Social Studies in Action: A Teaching Practices Library, K-12, http://www.learner.org/libraries/socialstudies/ elementary teacher Cynthia Vaughn shows how the concepts of equality and fairness can be incorporated into a general social studies lesson in the session "Leaders, Community, and Citizens." The session "Unity and Diversity" introduces ways of teaching students to overcome their differences and develop a sense of community.

Observe teachers introducing their 4th-, 5th-, and 6th-grade students to literature about Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement in Engaging with Literature: A Video Library, Grades 3-5 in two programs http://www.learner.org/libraries/engagingliterature/ "Building Community," and "Finding Common Ground."