Literature-focused activities for Hispanic Heritage Month

Combining the Hispanic voices and traditions in great children's literature with creative classroom activities is a powerful way to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month.

Use these titles to immerse your students in the rich cultures and diversity of this community.

Carmela Full of Wishes – Matt de la Pena

This beautiful story combines gratitude and hope while gently introducing deeper themes like immigration and labor.

After reading about Carmela and her wishes, encourage students to think more critically about the story and to extend their thinking about what it means to wish for things. You can prompt students with specific questions like:

Why do you think Carmela's wishes were significant?
What does it mean to wish?
Is a wish just a goal?
How do you decide what's a good wish?

Then, have students use the My Wish template with a simple sentence starter to convey a wish they would like to share.

Just In Case: A Trickster Tale and Spanish Alphabet Book – Yuyi Morales

Build Spanish language and vocabulary skills with this enjoyable tale about Señor Calvera and his adventure to find the perfect gift for Grandma Beetle.

Ask students to keep an eye out for the Spanish alphabet and point out any Spanish vocabulary you come across in the story. Then, have students create a personal Word Wall to keep track of new words.

You can also research additional Spanish vocabulary appropriate for your learners and have students create their own ABC Book with the Spanish words they have learned.

If a complete ABC book is more than you want each student to tackle, assign each student a letter and combine the individual student pages into a single file using the Project Wizard.

Change the Presentation options to a Book layout or export your project as a video or PDF to share with families.

Islandborn – Junot Diaz and Leo Espinosa

This beautiful picture book is a great story to share with your students as it explores ideas of culture, identity, and belonging.

To reflect on their own experiences, have students write a Five Senses Poem about their home and family or where they are from.

This is a great time to have a thoughtful conversation that helps students see that "home" and "family" can mean different things to different people.

Turning Pages - Sonia Sotomayor

After reading this inspirational story by the first Latina Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, task students with crafting an interview to demonstrate their understanding of her contributions to society.

Assign the Interview Sotomayor activity to make it easy for students to focus on sharing evidence and ideas from the text.

Interviews are a fun way to motivate students, inspire creativity, and connect students to their learning.

Half-Chicken: A Folk Tale in English and Spanish - Alma Flor Ada

Rather than a directed activity, this lively fable by Alma Flor Ada makes it easy to inspire your students to write and illustrate their own version of the story so they can share it with their family, friends, and classmates.

Have students select the New button at their home page and choose the Book option to find various colorful layouts to spark their creative writing process.

Young learners can use the text dictation tool to dictate their story and include images they create using the paint tools or stickers from the image library to complete their retelling of this fable.

Extend the celebration

Use the above titles to see creativity come alive. Don't forget to extend the celebration outside your classroom by sharing student work. With various ways to share work in Wixie, the celebration doesn't have to end.