Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

Martin Luther King’s birthday will soon be celebrated across the United States on January 19th, 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.

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 multimedia timeline on his life from Stanford University.

* 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

Any feedback is always welcome.

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