Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I love that I get to teach such a variety of materials daily to my students.  It is one of the joys of being an elementary educator.  The last two weeks, we have spent a lot of time learning about the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  The students have been extremely interested in his life and I feel like they have thoroughly enjoyed learning about our history.  Of course the history behind MLK is a sad.  It is so easy for our little ones to recognize that we are all created equal.  However, out of that sadness comes a story about bravery and love.  I'll fill you in on all of the activities we have done to learn about our history and MLK, Jr.

We began this unit by watching a Brain Pop, Jr. video on Martin Luther King, Jr.  This really got the kids thinking about him and brought up some memories we remembered from learning about him in Kindergarten.  Afterwards, we learned a song about Martin Luther King, Jr and we read a book from this fabulous unit by Megan Mitchell:  MLK Jr. Unit for Primary Teachers.  We also read the following books, Happy Birthday Martin Luther King by Jean Marzollo and Martin's Big Words by Doreen Rappaport.  We also watched several videos about Martin Luther King, Jr on Discovery Streaming.  Afterwards, we discussed Martin's character (the characteristics on the inside that we could infer through his actions and his words).  The students brainstormed his character traits and came up with the following words, brave, nice, kind, loving, leader, faithful, helpful, caring, peaceful, and thoughtful.  We then made silhouettes of Martin Luther King, Jr. face and wrote the character words on the silhouette.  We will glitter the words next so they stand out on his silhouette.

FYI:The example of the silhouette is from last year.  I have yet to get them all glittered.  In the past the students put vocabulary words from our MLK, Jr. unit on their silhouette, but this year I changed it up.  I can't wait to show you the final product.  I had hoped to get in over the weekend and complete them and then complete the post.  However, my busy weekend didn't allow for that.


Parents, on Friday the  Fundations unit 9 take home packet in your child's blue homework folder.  We will begin this unit next week.  We will review words and the students will learn about closed syllables.  The trick words say, says, see, between, and each will be added to our word wall.  They are also in the pack for you to cut out and add with all the other trick words from the previous packs.

In addition, I noticed that not every mailbox had homework schedule in it.  I will post the homework schedule on the blog.  Please read for 15 minutes and complete the math homework page that was sent home.

Some of you have asked about the 100th day.  We will not be celebrating the 100th day on Wednesday.  First grades common core standard states:  CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.1.NBT.A.1
Count to 120, starting at any number less than 120. In this range, read and write numerals and represent a number of objects with a written numeral.  Therefore, we celebrate the 120th day of school.  The 120th day is currently scheduled for February 27th.  Keep in mind that as we miss school due to the weather the 120th day will be pushed back for each day missed.  The kids will be asked to dress like a rock star as we celebrate our accomplishments.  I created a unit last year that we will use for this day and I can't wait to share it with the class.