Martin Luther King Jr. Mentor Text Mini-Lesson

Whether or not you have school, the lessons embedded in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speeches are great mentor text tools for teaching writing and inspiring our young people. Last year, I got inspired after looking at a tweet from Julia E. Torres, a librarian, educator, and activist, and she stated: “Just overheard a child in the hallway on the phone, “We are watching MLK videos again because you know they can neeeeever teach us anything new.” This was a middle school student. Let’s think about that…” And I had a nodding moment. How often do I see my colleagues teach MLK videos or don’t teach anything at all? How many times have I felt like I couldn’t make time to stop and honor this day? I wanted to take the lesson of teaching dreams to a new level. This lesson shows that Dr. Martin Luther King is an author to imitate and admire. His speeches made people listen about issues that mattered. Whether we feel pressured to move through content or curriculum, we have to maintain, some things just matter more.

This day, it matters. So, I thought about how to include Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream…” speech into our mentor text work. This lesson will not take the entire hour. However, my goal is to have students notice different sentences in MLK’s speech and write like him in regards to their own dreams. We will look at repetition, metaphors, and we will honor the sound of his voice on Monday. This post outlines the 3-step process of teaching his speech as a mentor text. It will also feature further work to do after the lesson.