Getting ready for January

Each year seems to go faster and faster. This year, I have been working hard to have some January materials up and ready when break is over. I finished up my New Year's activities before break, and this morning I finished up my Martin Luther King Day unit.

I included two literacy centers that share the same cards because we all know how much STUFF accumulates in a classroom, and the more stuff that needs to be prepped the less time there is to do other things. There is also a cut and paste book about MLK and some companion activities for March On!, a great text for discussing perspective taking (although my activities focus on character traits and vocabulary building. Last but not least, I included a short writing activity to get the students thinking about their hopes and dreams for a better world. Here are some of my models that I made:

For this activity, the students will think about character traits that describe Martin Luther King. They are provided a variety of traits and will cut/glue the ones that describe him around the outside of their drawing.

This is an example page I made from the cut and paste book. Students get to unscramble sentences about MLK and the holiday to create a book. Each sentence creates a new page, and students get to be the illustrator. You can download a free preview file on my TpT by clicking here...if you like it, get the whole file. Even better? Like The Third Wheel on Facebook by 1.5.13 and be one of 5 people to get it free! Click here to like us on Facebook!