So, you have pink on your shoes????

I know you're probably wondering about the title of this post, right? Well.... this is how I introduced MLK, Jr. and segregation to my kids today. Directly after our meeting, as an intro to our Reader's Workshop, I asked all of the kids wearing pink, orange, or black on their shoes to please stand up. I then told them to have a seat at their desks, that they would not be able to play at recess today. Yeah, I know. You can imagine the looks on their faces! They just stood there for a second, almost in shock as if they couldn't move. Finally I said it again. They reluctantly moved to their seats and sat down. While I was walking around the room I asked the friends at their seats how they felt about what I had just said. They were very eager to shout out, "Mad! Sad! Angry! It's not fair!" while kids at the carpet were content they were still going to play at recess, but also a little uneasy about why their other friends couldn't play. A few of them were brave enough to ask me why they couldn't play. I simply told them because they had pink, orange, or black on their shoes. I'm telling you, their minds were SPINNING! They were completely perplexed as to what had possessed me to come up with this idea. After a few minutes, I finally told them I was just kidding, and that I was proud of those who spoke up for their friends and themselves! We then talked about segregation and began our MLK study for the day!

I LOVED their "W" questions on our KWL chart... some of them are just magical! They were really reaching on the "K", having no clue who MLK was or why we were talking about him. When they started to say, "I know he wears shoes" we decided we were just inferring and should move on to the "W". Check out #4 on the "W" section. She said, "How did he believe in himself?" I all but let my jaw drop when that came out of my little Who's mouth!

 Next, we worked on creating a sentence and illustrating our sentence. Today the sentence read, "You can change the world".

 

 

Next, we watched a FREE Brainpop Jr. video on Martin Luther King, Jr. You can find this here:
http://www.brainpopjr.com/socialstudies/biographies/martinlutherkingjr/

For Writer's Workshop today, we started our biography projects!! We started by coloring our covers, and then starting our organizer with bullets points about MLK's life.

 

To manage the actual writing of the biography, I use my easel to make bullet points the students are able to copy onto their "All About MLK" recording sheet. Next, we discuss how these could be made into a sentence and the students write a sentence on the corresponding paper. They are then allowed to draw and color a picture.

 

 

 

 

"He had one brother and one sister."

 

For our Poem today, we read the story The Crayon Box that Talked along with the corresponding poem you can find in yesterday's post!

 

 

 

In Math, we are working on subtraction story problems. To correlate with our MLK studies, I brought out a bag of M&M's and we discussed how they were the same, and how they were different. My favorite quote was, "They both have chocolaty goodness inside!" After we acted out subtraction problems with our M&M's, I let the kids eat their M&M's. This little one came up to me with his coffee filter of M&M's and said, "Can you bundle these?" HOW adorable!! He was thinking about a rubber band, and how we "bundle" a group of 10!! So sweet!

 

 

 

Whew!! We had a very busy day today!! Stop by tomorrow for more fun! All of these products can be found here