Maclay School Celebrates Martin Luther King Jr. “Week”

For Maclay K-12 School, celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. was not a day long activity but continued throughout the week of January 14th. Each day there were activities for each grade that helped students understand and appreciate Martin Luther King and celebrate his 90th birthday.

The Lower School at Maclay organized specific activities that would help the children begin to learn about Dr. King’s life. The kindergarten classes read books, completed write the rooms about MLK, learned poems, and created a picture of his life.

The second-grade students made bookmarks in which the children wrote down their dreams for a better world. Also, in their social studies class, students studied Dr. King’s “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop Speech”.

The third-grade students, who were studying primary sources, analyzed a printed copy of the famous “I Have a Dream” speech. They followed up by watching a live delivery of Dr. King giving the speech at the steps of the Lincoln Monument in 1963.

The fourth-grade students delved into a discussion of Jim Crow Laws and the Civil Rights Movement with a supplementary video “In the Footsteps of a King” by the Florida Channel. To channel their artistic abilities, students completed paintings inspired by Panhandle artist Savannah Slim, now displayed on boards in Maclay.

Maclay Upper School students were encouraged to think deeply about MLK Day. Students were given a note card in which they wrote about their dream, whether it was a personal dream, one for America, or even the World. All of these note cards were then placed outside in a tree in the center of the courtyard for everyone to see.

On top of this activity, the freshmen students discussed rhetorical appeals of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, while students studying Latin completed a rhetorical Latin assignment involving the speech.

  Maclay