Martin Luther King Day Teaching Resources
Martin Luther King, Jr., is one of the United States most celebrated civil rights activists. A minister, Dr. King championed causes related to race, class, and human rights. He worked tirelessly to help bring civil rights to minorities and spent the years before his assassination focusing on anti-war and anti-poverty issues. Modern memorials to Dr. King often include a public service component on the day set aside to mark his birth, the third Monday of January.
Science NetLinks and AAAS have developed a number of resources from the social and behavioral sciences that will help you celebrate the work and legacy of Dr. King in your classroom.
Science NetLinks Resources
Lessons Tools Science Updates
Non-Science NetLinks Resources
Lessons
Groups We Belong To
Grade Band: K-2
Description: In this lesson, students will begin to think about and identify different kinds of groups. They will see that people are born into certain groups and that they join others. They will explore the circumstances that surround group affiliation and participation.
Group Rules and Expectations
Grade Band: 3-5
Description: This lesson helps students better recognize and understand how groups influence the behavior of their members through rules and expectations.
The Illusion of Race
Grade Band: 6-8
Description: This lesson helps students understand the ways that we have classified and defined groups, and to help students understand basic genetic traits that we have inherited from our common ancestors.
Understanding Stereotypes
Grade Band: 6-8
Description: In this lesson, students will confront age-related stereotypes, explore how stereotyping impacts their lives, and discuss how they can make changes to reduce overgeneralizations, unfair assumptions, and uncritical judgments about groups.
Belonging to a Group
Grade Band: 9-12
Description: In this lesson, students explore the basic human need to belong to or choose certain groups and to examine some of the stated and unstated purposes of those groups.
Social Class, Social Change, and Poverty
Grade Band: 9-12
Description: This lesson shows how sociological research and literature can add to our understanding of poverty.
Tools
Thinking about Segregation and Integration
Grade Band: 6-12
Description: In this resource, students use a computer model to investigate how people tend to cluster into groups of similar people.
Science Updates
Race and Achievement
Grade Band: 6-12
Description: This Science Update looks at the persistent differences in academic achievement between racial groups. Could a stunningly simple intervention make a big difference?
Other Resources
Africans in America
Grade Band: 6-12
Description: The Africans in America website is a companion to Africans in America, a six-hour public television series. The website chronicles the history of racial slavery in the United States — from the start of the Atlantic slave trade in the 16th century to the end of the American Civil War in 1865 — and explores the central paradox that is at the heart of the American story: a democracy that declared all men equal but enslaved and oppressed one people to provide independence and prosperity to another.
Where Bias Begins: The Truth about Stereotypes
Grade Band: 9-12
Description: This article, from Psychology Today, describes how stereotypes are used all the time, whether people know it or not.
