Hispanic Heritage Month is celebrated each year from September 15 to October 15 to commemorate Hispanic and Latino Americans who have made significant contributions to all avenues of society. There are many fun activities to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month in your classroom – from scavenger hunts, grammar activities, creation of flipbooks to of course research activities on famous Hispanic Americans.
Hispanic Heritage Month Biography Research
What better way to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month than to know more about the contributions of Hispanic and Latino Americans. Students can research facts to write a biography on any one Hispanic figure.
This activity doesn’t only help students to apply the writing process when writing a biography, but also generates Latino Heritage awareness.
Have students compile a biography research flipbook to document findings on their subject. The parts of the flipbook can cleverly scaffold each stage of the research writing process.
- Subject Name, time period and place and what he/she is known for.
- Early Life: key information on the subject’s early life: family, childhood, education, personal interests, young adult life.
- Obstacles & Achievements: milestones, awards, major successes, difficulties faced and outcomes
- Lasting Legacy: current status: time period and place, most memorable impact, important quote
Information collated in the biography flipbook can also serve as a first draft. Students can self-edit and peer-edit once they have documented research facts on the Hispanic American of choice.
A digital version of the flipbook templates can also be assigned to students via Google Classroom or any other safe online learning management system. All students need to do is follow the guiding prompts for each section and type in their responses in the pre-formatted text boxes. How convenient is that?
Student checklists and teacher marking rubrics further document teaching and learning and provide a conclusive end to this meaningful ELA writing activity.
Hispanic Heritage Month Grammar Activity
Another fun activity to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month in your classroom is to have a scavenger hunt for facts. This activity serves a dual purpose: it integrates language arts skills (grammar) with social studies.
Students read factual information on a Hispanic American and identify the part of speech (noun, verb, adverb etc ) of a given underlined word or phrase.
The fun begins when students go on a hunt to find the cards hidden around the classroom. With a clipboard, recording sheet, and a writing tool, they will respond to the question on each of the 36 cards.
The activity can also be broken up with students completing cards 1-17 first and then 18-36 later.
Once students have completed the hunt, it would be best to discuss the answers as a whole-class activity. The cards could be projected on the interactive whiteboard and the answer for each question discussed. This way, students can self-check their own responses.
The fun part is that students can also check their answers by scanning the QR Code on each card after they finish the activity.
A digital version of this parts of speech hunt in Boom Learning also makes this Hispanic Heritage-themed activity equally interesting.
Students will read each fact card and identify the part of speech for the underlined word or phrase by tapping on one of the given four options. A correct response will show the next card in the deck.
That’s reading and grammar rolled into one fun activity.
Hispanic Heritage Month Math Activity
Activities with a Hispanic Heritage theme need not be limited to ELA and Social Studies, but can also extend to math as well.
In the Frida Kahlo Timetables Activity, students will type the answer to the multiplication fact question.
Each correct response uncovers a colored piece of Frida Kahlo’s portrait. The end of the activity reveals a colored portrait of Frida Kahlo.
Hispanic Heritage Month Celebration Banner
Finally, what better way to display students’ work but with an eye-catching decorative Hispanic Heritage banner!
The bunting flags for this free banner may read: Hispanic Heritage Month or Hispanic Americans. There are also decorative flags featuring 12 Hispanic Americans and their time period.
The 12 prominent Hispanic and Latino Americans featured in the bunting flags (in alphabetical order) are:
- Anthony Romero
- Bob Menendez
- Cesar Chavez
- Isabel Allende
- Jose Feliciano
- Loreta Janeta
- Marco Rubio
- Oscar De La Hoya
- Rita Moreno
- Roberto Clemente
- Selena Gomez
- Sonia Sotomayor
You can display the biographies of 34 famous people of Hispanic/Latino descent under this banner.
And in true celebration style, invite community members to give a talk or to share their cultural experiences. This could take the form of an art and craft lesson, dance, or cooking lesson.
Click on the image link to access the free Hispanic Heritage Month Decorative Banner for your classroom.
Wish you and your students a memorable Hispanic Heritage Month!
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