Martin Luther King’s birthday will soon be celebrated across the United States on January 19th (in 2010, it’ll be January 18th), and I thought a “The Best…” list on him would be timely and useful.
I’ve only included sites that I thought would be accessible to English Language Learners.
Unfortunately, most of these sites just provide a very “safe” picture of the man as a nonviolent Civil Rights leader — without sharing much about his work challenging economic injustice and the Vietnam War.
I would strongly encourage any teacher to include, in any lessons related to King, either an excerpt from or a lesson related to Julian Bond’s essay on the making of King into a non-threatening hero.
You might also be interested in The Best Sites For Learning About The Martin Luther King Memorial.
Here are my choices for The Best Websites About Martin Luther King (not in order of preference):
* A short biography of King with audio support for the text. This was created by Florida elementary school students.
* The audio, and text, of his I Have A Dream Speech, hosted by American Rhetoric. Here’s another site that has a similar presentation.
* A very nice listening activity where you listen to the I Have A Dream speech while you’re reading text. Then you have to click on the words that are incorrect.
* Another excellent listening exercise, this time using a short biography of King.
* A short King biography, this time from the Library of Congress.
* Yet another short King biography along with comprehension questions.
* A short online children’s book about King.
* The Seattle Times has an exceptional special report on King.
* There’s a good CNN Special Report on King.
* A short video of King from the Biography Channel.
* Scholastic has information and a slideshow at The Legacy Of A Leader.
* Time Magazine has a slideshow on King’s life.
* The Atlanta Journal Constitution has online videos, a timeline and other good resources.
* National Geographic has an online video about King.
* EL Civics has a online lesson on King.
* The Associated Press has a number of multimedia resources on King.
* The Atlanta Constitution has an interactive reviewing King’s life.
* Enchanted Learning has some very simple resources on King.
* The Orange County Register has an interactive graphic about King.
* Here’s an online lesson for English Language Learners about King from Famous People Lessons. Its sister site has a lesson on Martin Luther King Day.
* The King Center has a site that provides audio of King’s famous “The Drum Major Instinct” speech. In addition to the audio, it shows the text (in an artistic sort of way) on the screen.
* Here’s a nice color slideshow of King’s life.
* I’m also adding The Do’s And Don’ts of Celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr’s Legacy from Teaching Tolerance. It provides some excellent guidelines for teachers.
* CBS has an interactive of famous quotes from King and other information.
* MSNBC has a slideshow on King’s life.
* The New York Times has another slideshow.
* Here’s another good interactive timeline of his life.
* Honoring Dr. King is a slideshow from CBS showing celebrations of his birthday throughout the country in 2009
* CBS has another interactive feature on King’s life.
* The Sacramento Bee has pictures of numerous Martin Luther King Day celebrations.
* Here’s a slideshow on King’s life that provides audio support for the text. It was created by Jen Farr.
TIME Magazine has just posted several new multimedia features on King:
* Martin Luther King, Jr. At Home
* Martin Luther King In His Own Words
* The Assassination of MLK Jr.
The New York Times Learning Network has a collection of lesson plans that could be modified for ELL’s,as does Thinkfinity.
Do’s and Don’ts of Celebrating MLK Day is another good guide from Teaching Tolerance.
While a college student in 1947, Martin Luther King also wrote a column in the campus newspaper and titled it “The Purpose of Education.” You can read the complete piece at Stanford’s collection of his papers), and it might be a useful article for the classroom.
Completing The Martin Luther King Memorial is a Washington Post slideshow. The Post also has an accompanying graphic.
The History Channel has several video on Dr. King.
How Stuff Works has some videos, too.
ESOL Courses has an impressive collection of Online Exercises and Printable Worksheets related to King.
Remembering Martin Luther King Jr. is a series of photos from The Los Angeles Times.
MLK Honored with Memorial on the Mall is a video report from CBS News.
King holiday observed across the U.S. is a series of photos from The Sacramento Bee.
In August, 2011, the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial will open in Washington, D.C. As part of that event, the MLK Reading Project is inviting people to read and record short portions of King’s speeches. It’s an extremely simple interface, and all you need is a computer microphone. No registration is necessary.
