The long holiday breaks are over for a while and it is back to school for a new calendar year! While Christmas and our favorite fall holidays are done, there are still PLENTY of wonderful and engaging themes to explore with students. Like, Martin Luther King Jr. Day!
Martin Luther King Jr. Day arrives quickly after returning from winter break. Therefore, while this is an important day to celebrate and explore with students, you may not be quite in the mood for planning. That’s why ready to teach lesson plans, like our Martin’s Big Words Lesson is perfect.
Martin’s Big Words Lesson Plan
If one ready to teach lesson plan sounds perfect, what about three? What about five?! Well, with our Martin’s Big Words Read Aloud you have everything you need to engage your students in at least three full reading lessons. However, depending on how you choose to include this book in your class you may even have enough for four or even five days of reading activities.
Now, if you have used any of our read alouds before you already know that we consistently provide at least three full days of reading lesson plans. What you may not know is that we recently updated all of our read alouds to include additional reading activities. These additional reading activities provide you with more options on how to engage your students in reading and further develop their literacy skills.
Let’s use our newly updated read aloud for Martin’s Big Words to explore these new updates. Furthermore, let’s also review our core reading lesson plans that are included.
Martin’s Big Words:Day 1 Lesson Plan
Day one is all about engaging students in reading the book by providing them with text based questions. This includes not only questions to discuss during and after reading, but also before reading.
Here are five of the text based questions you will find for your day one lesson:
- What is the title of the story?
- Does the title give us any clues about what the story is about?
- Who are the people in this book?
- What do we know about Martin?
- What happened in the beginning of the book?
These are only five of several questions you’ll find in this read aloud for Martin’s Big Words, and these are only for day one!
Martin’s Big Words: Day 2 Lesson Plan
One of the most important skills we can teach students about reading is the importance of revisiting a text. Moreover, how to use the text to provide evidence for questions. That’s why after your first reading of the book on day one, your students will revisit the story of Martin for at least two more days.
On day two, students engage with the text through comprehension questions focused on character traits and craft and structure. Here are some examples of the types of questions your students will see on day two:
- How does Martin feel in the beginning of the book? How do his feelings change in the middle and end?
- What words can you use to describe Martin Luther King Jr.?
- Why did the author write the words larger, in different colors, and in quotation marks throughout the book?
As you can see, just in two days your students will have explored several important questions that explore different depths of knowledge. Ready to see what day three holds? Keep reading!
Martin’s Big Words: Day 3 Lesson Plan
On day three, students will once again return to their text to dive deeper into Martin’s story.
The questions they will explore during this lesson plan focus on how the words and illustrations further support the story.
An example of the type of questions students will see on this day is, What do the illustrations teach us about the people and how they are feeling in the middle of the book?
At the end of day three, students have completed a thorough reading of the text. However, the learning doesn’t have to stop here! If you would like to continue exploring this text with your students we have several additional reading activities.
Martin’s Big Words Vocabulary
One of the new areas of learning we added to this read aloud (and all of our read alouds!) is dedicated to vocabulary. And when we say dedicated, we mean that we have provided more than one vocabulary activity!
In addition to traditional vocabulary worksheets for Martin’s Big Words you will find a vocabulary poster, vocabulary word cards, and even anchor charts. This means you can choose to use what best suits your classroom needs.
Martin’s Big Words Reading Activities
The additional reading activities don’t end with vocabulary. In addition, you will find a writing activity and retelling puppets.
These two activities are wonderful to use for either practice or assessment. For a more formal assessment, we have also included a ready to use quiz.
Last, but certainly not least, is a craft activity! Why? Because creative expression is a wonderful way for children to demonstrate their understanding of text, AND it brings in some creativity and fun.
So, how do you use these additional reading activities? Any way that you’d like! Once you have finished the three core reading lessons you can choose to spend an additional day on writing or retelling puppets and then wrap up your unit with a quiz and craft on day five. Another option would be to choose one additional activity to finish the text on day four.
Not sure you want to spend four days on one text, but want to use some additional activities? Then feel free to add an additional activity onto each of the three core reading days. You choose what works best for you and your classroom.
Beyond the activities themselves we have also provided you with two choices on how to deliver each lesson. Choose to have students explore the reading activities digitally or print them off. Again, choose what works best for your students and your teaching style.
Whether you choose to stick with three days of lesson plans or extend the read aloud another day or two, we promise your students will walk away with not only a deeper understanding of Martin Luther King Jr. but also a deeper understanding of important reading skills.
