Biography Study- Famous Latinos in U.S. History

Hispanic Heritage Month begins on September 15th every year.  So early in the school year, this is a great opportunity to affirm and celebrate some of the "greats" of our Spanish-speaking bilingual students' culture.  We do a project in Room 205 that not only teaches a plethora of skills and functions as the foundation of lessons on research, but also provides the class with about 20 new role models to revisit throughout the year.

Students do independent biography investigations of a famous Latino who has made a positive impact on the United States.

The Teaching:

I use the Big 6 to structure our investigations.

We discuss the importance of Hispanic Heritage Month and why we should study and learn about these people.  I then provide students with some initial websites and posters that give brief summaries of goal-achieving Latinos and the students create lists of who they would like to study.  For this particular project, it is important that each student studies a different person, because our final product is a Live Wax Museum!  

I teach multiple mini-lessons on the following topics:

• Internet research, book research, and everything in between
• citing sources
• The important components and text structure of a biography
• fact vs. opinion
• chronology
• big ideas- specifically, WHY is this person important?  Seriously, why should I even care to learn about this person?
• KEY details vs. "just" details
• Writing a solid paragraph: introduction, main idea, evidential support, conclusion
• Writing for an intended audience
• revising vs. editing, the difference and value of each

The Presentation:

Once students have a "publishable" paragraph (We talked about how in museums there are those little signs all over that explain the exhibits and they share only the most important information, so seriously, this time, just a paragraph), we learn the art of Photostory.  Students find (and cite) pictures of their person from the internet, record themselves reading their biography of their person and jazz it up with all sorts of fun transitions and music.  (Shhh.... they don't realize it, but this is their summative assessment for the project)  Once all projects have been emailed to me, the even MORE fun part happens... The Wax Museum.

We invite the entire school and our families to come tour our wax museum.  We plan and prepare costumes and background settings for each display.  We publish our paragraphs in English and Spanish (we have a bilingual audience, after all), and rearrange the room so that it really looks like a museum.  I don my best curator persona and the kids freeze as the first group of of visitors enters our room.  They stand frozen for a solid 15 minutes as the visitors watch their Photostories play over the projector and read about the famous Latinos.  The kids are grateful for the 5 minute break between classes so that they can relax a little and maybe find a new position to freeze into for 15 minutes.

It's a great time, and the kids are always so proud of all their hard work!  How do you celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month?