WWW: Hispanic Heritage Cultural Tour

¡Feliz viernes a todos!

Thanks for joining me again this week!  In an effort to show how immigration has truly impacted the United States, I am featuring a resource from the Smithsonian Education website.  Since this month is Hispanic Heritage Month, the Smithsonian has put together a Hispanic Heritage Cultural Tour that can be completed online without even leaving the classroom.  On this virtual tour, users can find descriptions of the twelve objects showcased, and links to related objects, along with activities that explain their cultural significance, and quizzes to check comprehension.  Users will also notice that there is a list of resources that can be used in conjunction with this tour.  Students can even use the Interactive Lab Notebook to take notes and can refer to them at any time.

The objects, some of which include a short-handled hoe, a uniform from Roberto Clemente’s time playing for the Pirates, and a carnival mask, to name just a few, are all accompanied by descriptions of what they represent for the Latino community.  Many of the objects also illustrate ways in which the Latino community has influenced or impacted the United States.  For example, the Devoción de Nuevo Mexico art piece shows the influence Latin American art has had, while the carnival mask illustrates the maintenance of Latino traditions even in the United States.  Each object showcased on the tour can be a discussion point for the importance of immigration!

Advertisement

En la Clase: What My Calavera Did at Night

 

As many of you  already know, literacy is one of my favorite ways to integrate cultural content, like Día de los Muertos, into a standards based curriculum.  Not only does it reinforce the reading or writing skills that we work on throughout the year, it’s also a way to help ensure that we don’t fall into that trap of the “Tourist” approach to multicultural education.  Too often when we teach this kind of cultural content, it appears to our students that we’re taking  a break from our ‘real’ curriculum to do something fun.  While these units can and should be fun, it shouldn’t appear that they’re not authentic and important parts of our curriculum.  By combining this content with types of literacy activities done throughout the year, students don’t see these projects as less important than any others.

For today’s En la Clase, I’ve adapted a unit I typically used with my students when we returned to school in January.  Many of you may be familiar with the book Snowmen at Night.  In this story, a boy imagines what  his snowman does at night while he’s sleeping.  My students would make their own very large snowperson, then write a story about what their snowperson did at night.  For my younger students, this was a project where I could introduce how to use a brainstorming web for a multi-paragraph paper, with each section of the web representing a different paragraph.  For older students, it was practice for skills that they’d already learned.  Hesitant writers were often excited and engaged by creating their snowperson before any of the writing began.