Martin Luther King JR. primary resource

Learn about Martin Luther King JR. and his role in the Civil Rights Movement

This primary resource introduces children to the significance of Martin Luther King JR. and his role in the Civil Rights Movement. Discover key events in African-American history and how they have helped to shape a better, more inclusive, society in this easy to read comic. When was slavery legal in the United States? Why was Rosa Parks arrested in 1955? Who became America’s first black president?

Pupils will learn how people like Martin Luther King JR. campaigned tirelessly against discrimination and segregation based on skin colour, and influence that has had on us today in our National Geographic Kids’ History primary resource sheet.

The teaching resource can be used in study group tasks for a simple explanation of significant events in the Civil Rights Movement, as a printed handout for each pupil to read themselves, or for display on the interactive whiteboard, as part of a whole class reading exercise.

Activity: Ask the children to select one of the key characters from the comic to conduct a case study on. Pupils could write a newspaper article about Martin Luther King JR.’s important speech in 1963, or Rosa Parks’ arrest in 1955. They could carry out their own research into Martin Luther King JR.’s life or the successes of former President Barack Obama.

N.B. The following information for mapping the resource documents to the school curriculum is specifically tailored to the English National Curriculum and Scottish Curriculum for Excellence. We are currently working to bring specifically tailored curriculum resource links for our other territories; including South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. If you have any queries about our upcoming curriculum resource links, please email: schools@ngkids.co.uk

This History primary resource assists with teaching the following History objectives from the National Curriculum:

Gain historical perspective by placing their growing knowledge into different contexts, understanding the connections between local, regional, national and international history; between cultural, economic, military, political, religious and social history; and between short- and long-term timescales.

National Curriculum Key Stage 1 History objective:

Pupils should be taught: the lives of significant individuals in the past who have contributed to national and international achievements. Some should be used to compare aspects of life in different periods [for example, Elizabeth I and Queen Victoria, Christopher Columbus and Neil Armstrong, William Caxton and Tim Berners-Lee, Pieter Bruegel the Elder and LS Lowry, Rosa Parks and Emily Davison, Mary Seacole and/or Florence Nightingale and Edith Cavell]

This History primary resource assists with teaching the following Social Studies Second level objective from the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence:

I can discuss why people and events from a particular time in the past were important, placing them within a historical sequence

I can compare and contrast a society in the past with my own and contribute to a discussion of the similarities and differences

This British values primary resource assists with promoting fundamental British values as part of SMSC (spiritual, moral, social and cultural development) in schools using the following OFSTED assessment criteria:

Through their provision of SMSC, schools should:

enable students to develop their self-knowledge, self-esteem and self-confidence;

enable students to distinguish right from wrong and to respect the civil and criminal law of England;

encourage students to accept responsibility for their behaviour, show initiative, and to understand how they can contribute positively to the lives of those living and working in the locality of the school and to society more widely;

further tolerance and harmony between different cultural traditions by enabling students to acquire an appreciation of and respect for their own and other cultures;