Goals and Dreams

An oldie but a goodie, in my opinion. Back in case you missed it! It's January, and our annual celebration of the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is today. Martin Luther King Day has not always been a national holiday, and during all the years when school districts were sorting through whether they would observe by having school or by not having school, Dr. King's family has always reminded us to "Make it a day ON, not a day OFF."

So what are you doing in your classroom to commemorate the life of this American legend? In case you are still looking around for a few ideas to add to your lesson plan, here are some you might like. The Martin Luther King unit has always been my favorite one to teach because it reaches my students at their core. I love watching them search deep inside of themselves for who they are and what they stand for, and then find a way to share that with all of us. Isn't that just what Dr. King did: reach deep inside himself to find what really mattered and then try to share it with the world?

Of course, my fourth graders know about the "I Have a Dream" speech long before they reach their year with me, but not many are aware that Dr. King carefully chose the Lincoln Memorial as the place to deliver that speech and why. The second line of this speech begins, "Five score years ago...", referring to the Gettysburg address, which of course begins, "Four score and seven years ago...", referring to the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Wait.... What's going on here...could there be some connection across time and history between people who tried to make things better for all of us? Of course there was. Here's the sequence I present to my students:

1. Read the Declaration of Independence together. (You can even do a CLOSE READ of it if you must!)
2. Discuss how the Declaration was kind of like a letter from the Founding Fathers to England that "This is how it's going to be around here from now on."
3. Read the Gettysburg Address together. I use a beautifully illustrated picture book for that reading by Abraham Lincoln, of course, but with illustrations by Michael McCurdy.
4. Discuss how the Gettysburg Address was really a letter from Lincoln to the Founding Fathers on how it was going 87 years after the signing of the Declaration.
5. Next we get to the famous Dream speech. There are so many illustrated versions of this speech. Wasn't this speech meant to be a letter informing President Lincoln that we as a people had not really come as far along as his vision  for us?  That's precisely why it was delivered right in front of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963.

For children (and many of their teachers!) who were not here when the Civil Rights Movement was happening, when Dr. King made his speeches, or when he was assassinated, I have found this sequence to be a pretty effective way of placing King Day in its proper historical perspective.

To add personal meaning to each child, I challenge my students to write a letter to Dr. King, telling him how we're doing today as the beneficiaries of his dream. How is that vision working for each of us?

My complete lesson plan, which adds a craftivity, poetry, literature and video resources, along with student samples and a rubric which makes grading a snap, is available by clicking here:

New for 2022: For a grounded approach to the "I Have a Dream" lesson, try this new resource which ties influential learnings to practical action in order to reach those dreams!

 

You might also like this free download to keep the love flowing through Acts of Kindness the rest of the year:

Who will make the difference to finally bring peace to all of us? Those sweet children sitting in all of our classrooms right now! The dream lives as long as people believe in it and believe that their actions will make a difference!

Artwork at the top of this page by Maya, one of my sweet students, keeping the dream alive!

If I can do anything else to help make your job easier this year, please let me know in the comments below! If I use your idea for a new blog post, you will win a TpT $10 gift card. If I create a new resource for Rainbow City Learning based on your idea, you will win a free copy of that resource to use in your classroom! (Note: all comments are reviewed before appearing on my blog. It may take a few hours for your comment to appear! Thanks for your patience!)

For more teaching ideas for this month, be sure  to check out the other blogs of Teacher Talk! 

For more great January teaching ideas, be sure to check out these Teacher Talk bloggers! 

If you would also like to be a part of Teacher Talk, we are a group of teacher bloggers who share posts that are heavy on the ideas with just a little selling of our educational materials at TeachersPayTeachers.com.  For more information about joining The Best of Teacher Entrepreneurs Marketing Cooperative, go to https://bit.ly/3o7D1Dv.  Feel free to email me at retta.london@gmail.com if you have any questions. 

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Searching for Our Future Selves

 

I just finished reading a book that was hard to close. My mind is racing, and the blog fairies have shouted loud and clear, "THIS! WRITE ABOUT THIS!" I admit that it was the title alone that drew me in immediately. The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. Like many of you, 2020 has brought many challenges to me as well as many sleepless nights. Up way past midnight on most nights, and yes, missing my library, missing the chance to walk over to the new books section or the children's collection just to hold real books in my hands and to see what is new in the world of writing. I miss seeing my neighbors, old friends, former students, and the families of my students in the library. It's always been such an active and welcoming part of our community. So...when I opened my Kindle on one sleepless night this week and it suggested The Midnight Library to me, it was an impulse buy for sure!

This book was so much more than I had expected, both for me, and for the main character, Nora Seed. Nora is a girl living in the UK and having the worst year/worst life possible, in her opinion. As we meet her, she is contemplating suicide. The year 2020 has been so bad so far that I'm sure many of us can sympathize with her. Our curious natures as teachers and lifelong learners, though, must make us think ahead with some optimism. The killer hornets didn't get us over the summer as expected, right? 

Nora enters an in-between life and death place called the Midnight Library, where time has stopped exactly at midnight. A quote from the book: "...within that library, the shelves go on forever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be if you had made other choices...Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?" This stopped me right there in my tracks. The very book that I had finished before this was Jodi Picoult's new one, The Book of Two Ways. In this book, Dawn Edelstein survives a plane crash and decides to go back to a life she left fifteen years earlier rather than home to her husband and family. The book unfolds with each life playing out in alternating chapters. My new favorite Picoult, and I have read every one. The two last books that I chose to read were so similar in theme that it has caused me to think, as teachers do, in lesson plan terms. How can I use what I have learned here to inspire and instruct my students? You do that too, right? 

This lesson-plan based thinking is what's allowed me to to continue my love of reading throughout my thirty-six year teaching career. How can I be a teacher who inspires a love of reading if I do not read myself? What? No time to read? What if you could find connections between what you are reading yourself, and what you are reading with your students? I did this with almost every book that was a whole class read, a read-aloud, or a lit circle (book club) selection that my third, fourth, or fifth graders experienced. My secret was to never reveal the title of the book I was actually reading as I wove stories from that book into the lessons I was teaching about a book made for kids. It was a real life lesson for text to text and text to world and probably text to self as well.  A time that I remember the excitement being super high was when I was describing events and themes in Ready Player One as we explored science fiction choices for kids. Another great connection was between Hatchet by Gary Paulsen and Wild by Cheryl Strayed. 

My lesson plan thought process tells me that that author Wendy Mass' Willow Falls book series, starting with 11 Birthdays (a Groundhog Day for kids) has a great connection to the last two books I read. The whole idea of living different realities and editing regrets could make for some pretty rich responses to reading, discussion, and eventually to writing of their own. The way that I would always present this to kids was through optimism though. Rather than editing regrets and living out different choices, what about looking forward to the kinds of lives they are imagining for themselves in the future? 2020 viewed in the rear view mirror as a blip in the radar, something they survived because, like you, they are strong, resourceful, and optimistic. Just a germ of an idea to get your lesson planning brain into gear! 

I made several portfolio connections to this idea of looking forward with optimism to how each child's life might play out over the years to come. I did this through writing letters to future selves, considering the "past" while creating possible futures in their imaginations. If this idea of including some futuristic thinking in your language arts practice or portfolio collection, you might want to explore my "Letters to Future Me" distance learning resource. (Can certainly be used in your face to face classroom as well!) 

These letters and poetry, with a little added art, make a beautiful stand-alone portfolio for the year or a great addition to whatever portfolio collection you already have in progress.

Here's a video preview also:

I hope this post has given you something to think about as you plan your lessons going forward, and I wish you the best ending that you dream of for 2020 along with optimism for 2021!

For more October ideas from our Teacher Talk bloggers, click below!  If you would also like to be a part of Teacher Talk, we are a group of teacher bloggers who share posts that are heavy on the ideas with just a little selling of our educational materials at TeachersPayTeachers.com.  For more information about joining The Best of Teacher Entrepreneurs Marketing Cooperative, go to https://bit.ly/3o7D1Dv.  Feel free to email me at retta.london@gmail.com if you have any questions. 

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