Latinx Heritage Month runs every year from September 15 through October 15. Get started on your own celebration by checking out the classroom activities, lesson plans, and Web links available on the ReadWriteThink.org calendar entry for Hispanic Heritage Month. For resources on specific Latinx authors, illustrators, and themes, visit the following resources.
NCTE member and and co-editor of English Journal R. Joseph Rodriguez shared this blog post about “Our US Poet Laureate and Hispanic Heritage.” Rodriguez celebrates Juan Felipe Herrera (US Poet Laureate, 2015–17) and shares links to a variety of resources. Follow up by reading NCTE’s interview with Herrera from The Council Chronicle: “This Giant Classroom That Is America.”
Learn how author Pat Mora draws topics from her life in the Language Arts article “Profile: Pat Mora, Fiction/Nonfiction Writer and Poet.” The article also discusses Mora’s advocacy for cultural and linguistic diversity, and for more Latinos in all phases of children’s book publishing. You can learn more about Pat Mora from this ReadWriteThink.org calendar entry celebrating her birthday.
Middle school students can explore how our senses provide powerful tools for literary analysis and comprehension with the ReadWriteThink.org lesson Color of Silence: Sensory Imagery in Pat Mora’s Poem “Echoes.” The lesson is an extension of activities included in the NCTE book Living Voices: Multicultural Poetry in the Middle School Classroom.
Read strategies for teaching reflective writing using Puerto Rican author Judith Ortiz Cofer’s Call Me María and other texts in “Reading at Risk,” an excerpt from NCTE’s Judith Ortiz Cofer in the Classroom: A Woman in Front of the Sun.
Read more from CNV Fellow Marilisa Jiménez Garcia on “The Importance of Latinx Literature for Youth.”
How will you recognize Latinx Heritage Month in your classroom?