Free Martin Luther King BrainPOP Video and Resources
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was one of the greatest leaders of our time, and I believe it’s important to honor him and recognize the impact that he had on America. However, as a classroom teacher I struggled to find appropriate teaching materials for elementary students on this topic. Most resources were either too vague to be effective or too detailed and overwhelming for 4th and 5th graders. My students were old enough to start learning about racial inequality and the civil rights movement, and they needed to have opportunities to explore and discuss these concepts.
That’s why I was excited to discover that BrainPOP.com has a wonderful free video called Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.! It’s just 6 minutes long and features two lovable animated characters, Tim and Moby, so it’s perfect for upper elementary students! Somehow Tim and Moby manage to explain the important events in Dr. King’s life and his impact on the civil rights movement in a way that’s very easy to understand.
BrainPOP.com has a number of resources to go along with the video including leveled online quizzes and vocabulary activities. But I wanted to create a few more resources to help my students develop a deeper understanding of the issues presented in the video. I contacted BrainPOP to obtain their permission, and the end result was Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a free packet of supplementary materials aligned with Common Core informational text standards for grades 3 through 6. The discussion activities described in the packet are also aligned with speaking and listening standards.
My Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. freebie includes full teacher directions, ready-to-use printables, cooperative learning activities, sentence-writing practice, a hand-on vocabulary activity, and discussion task cards. I recently update the teacher’s guide because the links to the BrainPOP resources no longer worked, and some of the original online activities are no longer available. If you downloaded this freebie in the past and it doesn’t look like the one below, please download it again to get the most recent version.
More January Teaching Resources
If you like this freebie, check out my January Activities Pack to find more seasonal activities for upper elementary students. This resource includes an activity that involves listening to a story and recording details about Dr. King’s life on a character map graphic organizer. The product also includes winter word sorting activities, a science experiment to explore why icy roads are treated with salt and sand, and several New Years activities. The January Activities Pack is just one of the resources in my Holiday and Seasonal Activities Bundle, a collection of lessons and printables that keep students engaged in learning during every season of the year. You can also find loads of free resources for January and Winter in my January Seasonal File Cabinet folder!
