
My students love learning about Martin Luther King, Jr. and I love teaching all about him. In our classroom, we spend a whole week focusing on his life and all of the things that he did for our country. I use videos, picture books and a project to really make an impact on my students.
Let’s start with a video! The video that I show each year, has animations as well as real images from newspapers and speeches. It does a really great job telling his whole story from where he was born to how he became an advocate for African American rights.
After watching the videos and listening to some of the speech, we read an informational text all about MLK. You can find this text in my MLK pack on TpT here. They learn so much from the videos, the informational text gives us another opportunity to do some close reading. Non-fiction is always tricky for students to read, so every extra chance to practice is a good idea!



Some of my favorite phrases are, “the color skin you have doesn’t matter” “making a difference in the world” “inspired big dreams” and “taking the lead”. My students showed me that they understood what MLK stood for and why he was so influential. These collages make a great hallway display. Each of them also picked one of the words or phrases on their collage and wrote a paragraph in our writing journals about why they chose to put that on their collage.
How do you teach about Martin Luther King Jr.? I would love to find more ideas! Want to save these ideas for later? Pin one of the images below to save and share!