Dreaming of a better world and Outlaw Words

For the first time in my teaching history our district gave us MLK day off. At first I was actually a little sad, knowing that my students would be doing anything but remembering Dr. King on their day off. I decided to scrap all my reading lessons and concentrate on Dr. King today. I had found this great project on Pinterest, and couldn't wait to do it with my students. I didn't feel like dragging out the paint today, so we traced our hands on paper and cut them out instead. Here is the original project:

On the inside, we created self portraits out of paper, and wrote our own dream for the world. I was humbled by the thoughtfulness and understanding of equality my students demonstrated.

Quick change to literacy. Here is our "Outlaw Words" easel.

Here is the sign on the upper right side:

In the bucket are paint chips with the outlawed word at the top, and synonyms for that word below it. The kids can pull out the paint chip and find a better word than the Outlawed word they wrote. This group of kids are really into "laws", so tell them something is illegal and they are ALL over it. Funny how they don't view school rules with the same eyes. 

That's all for today! I'm too caught up in Wisconsin politics tonight to have very much focus for anything but.