I have a dream: Discrimination and US History

I do have a dream.

While working on a project about discrimination with my teenage students, I wanted to share with them some important events about the U.S. History. The challenge I had was to plan an interesting lesson, not one in which they start to hate learning about the past. Luckily, I remembered a video my classmates in the teaching training programme have shown us about "Dreams". The video was part of the film "Tangled", kind of a version of the old fairy tale Rapunzel. 

I've prepared this worksheet to deal with the topic. The idea is to start by asking them how they feel about learning History. Then, we will discuss whether they have dreams and they will be able to speak about them.

After that, I will show them the video Tangled - I have a dream (lyrics) and ask them what they think this sentence means:

“We’ve got a dream… so our differences ain’t really that extreme”

Finally, I intend to speak about the famous speech delivered by Martin Luther King about equality in the United States. This will be an introduction for the presentation of  their case studies, regarding not only racial discrimination but also gender discrimination, discrimination against women and bullying. 

I will encourage them to find out more about this topic at home. Hopefully, students will remember this key event by laughing at the video and sharing their own dreams and hopes.