Martin Luther King Jr. Lesson Plans

Every year people throughout the country celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day with speeches, concerts, and involvement in public service projects. As a teacher, we have a choice to make. We can bring out the tired old worksheets, or read from the same book we read from last year, and the year before, and the year before that, or we can jazz things up a little.

One way you can do this is by turning an overview of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and accomplishments into an evaluation of what it takes to make a difference. When you read accounts of his life you’ll find that he started out as many other students do. He went to elementary school, and on to college. He was intelligent, and was brought up in a religious environment, but it was what he did with his talents and skills that made all the difference. On the Internet you can find timelines to show the choices he made which led him to become one of the greatest civil rights leaders of our time. You can also find copies of his speeches and essays that can provide a treasure trove of different lesson planning options. These topic lend themselves to a study of  a variety of topics including social studies, public speaking, and English. You could spend a whole class period just analyzing the imagery and ideas expressed in his “I Have A Dream Speech”.

An evaluation of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life also can work as a way to explore character education. He persevered against frightening odds. His house was bombed several times, and he was stabbed with a letter opener while signing copies of his book “Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story”. But despite these dangers, and the difficulty of his life path, he preached nonviolent civil disobedience and worked to promote civil rights.

This holiday can also provide a way for teachers to explore the topic of diversity. There are many wonderful lessons that focus on teaching children, even from a young age, what prejudice means. Whether you use a lesson for kindergarteners in which they use crayons as representations of different ethnicities, or a lesson that focuses on the laws and injustice of segregation in America for older students, you can find one that makes this issue real and understandable.  What follows below is a list of a few of the best Martin Luther King Jr. lesson plans.

Martin Luther King Jr. Lesson Plans:

Martin Luther King Jr.: A Clothesline Timeline (for kindergarten to twelfth grade): This lesson offers a great way to provide an overview of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and accomplishments. The lesson has links to resources about his life, and photos. This could be a great way to kick off a Martin Luther King Jr. unit.

Let Freedom Ring: The Life & Legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. (designed for third through fifth, but could be used for any grade level): This lesson has students discuss Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have A Dream” speech. In particular, students focus on the imagery and ideas he used to get his idea across. There is a link to a terrific website with information about Martin Luther King Jr., including access to famous documents.

Teaching King and the Civil Rights Movement with Primary Source Documents (ninth through twelfth grade): Students use primary sources to learn about Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement. The lesson comes with some suggestions for discussion questions. The only thing the lesson did not provide was links to the primary documents. You would have to use one of the lesson above to get a list of these links.

Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have A Dream” Speech (sixth through eighth grade): Students construct a jackdaw, a collection of objects about a certain subject, to describe the work of Martin Luther King Jr. I like this object because it requires students to take a look at speeches and documents and pick what they could put in their jackdaw.