Today we began to explore how we read about history. We used Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as an example of how students are often given the same narrow set of information over and over again when reading about history, leading to a misunderstanding of our past and present.

We began by reading a simplified biography of MLK written on a popular history website for kids. Students then wrote their understanding of who MLK was based on the text and their prior knowledge. As they shared their responses, we charted the words we heard over and over again.

After seeing our collective understanding, we then began to dig into excerpts of more complex texts about MLK that were not written for children. We highlighted new and surprising information. We then added our new and growing understandings of MLK in blue:

Tomorrow, we have two more text excerpts to dig into. Then we will think about why this information had been left out of our previous learning, who benefits from this information not being taught and how we can do better as readers of history.

This is the document that has guided our work in this first lesson: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Cl4iqfXAAJSKpCI_jRI4iXkJvtRzgZh61VtDEMD8DsY/edit