Strategies—Section 2: From Aztecs to Aztlan: you are my cousin, aren't you?
In this second section students will be reading about and discussing the evolution of the Spanish and Mexican people in the United States, particularly the Southwest and California. How did they get here? Why did they come? What struggles and obstacles did they have to overcome, and how did the people succeed? How did our family members succeed? How are we succeeding?
This is the biography/autobiography section of the unit. Students will read a children's biography of Cesar Chavez entitled Cosechando Esperanza/Harvesting Hope, which will be offered in both languages. A strategy I will employ here is to encourage native readers of Spanish to read this book first in English, talk about it in their literature circle, again in English, and then read it in Spanish to gain insight about their own achievement in reading and comprehending L2, as well as to awaken their own metacognitive thinking strategies and processes about their second language acquisition. Of course, the reverse process will be employed by the native English readers. The reading level of the book is grade appropriate.
The other literature selection in this segment of the unit will be selected autobiographical narratives read aloud from the book entitled Mexican Voices/ American Dreams. Although this is an adult work, the prose is clean and direct and I feel most students will be able to negotiate the English text by this point. I will direct read-alouds in various configurations from the literature circles, to paired readings, to "teacher reads aloud," thereby facilitating the early English readers in their speed and comprehension. In some cases children will choose a story to read silently and retell it to a classmate or to me. Class discussions around this book will focus on the immigrant experience and how it relates to experiences the children have had in their own lives. As well, this reading and discussion should stimulate thinking about students' own "personal journey" stories.
Another example of a lesson plan will involve teaching students about the interview process, with the objective of later doing their own interviews to convert into a class book of biographies. I will begin modeling the interview process by first spending one class period engaged in a whole-class activity in which I lead students in a discussion about the immigrant experience and then help them to formulate 10 to 12 questions they would like to ask of someone who has emigrated from another country to the United States. Students will practice asking the prepared questions to one another and thinking about answers they would give. From here we will select 10 to 12 children to ask the interview questions.
Another class session will be devoted to conducting the interview with a person from the community whom I will have invited to visit our class. Each student will have a copy of the prepared questions, and those who don't ask the interview questions will be responsible for recording the interviewee's answers. Class discussion post-interview will center on our procedure—what worked and what did not work—and what we learned about doing an interview and about the immigrant experience of our interviewee.
Next, each child will choose a family or community member he or she wishes to interview and repeat the same process, formulating a set of questions and interviewing their candidate as a homework assignment. Using these interviews as a basis, the children will write their own biographies in another class period. Later, they will read them aloud to the class, after which the biographies will be collated and stored as a book to be displayed in the school library where others may read it. This sub-unit will take about two weeks, allowing time for children to set up and deliver home interviews.
In class discussions students will uncover mirrors between various life histories they have encountered and the literary characters we have been reading about. Students will discuss, interpret and evaluate non-fiction, especially biography, in their literature circles. They will focus on making text-to-world as well as text-to-self connections. Discussion questions will focus on contributions the person they interviewed is making to our world. Also, how am I like this person? How am I different? What contributions am I making to the world right now and what are some contributions I hope to make?
Students will write their first rough draft of their "personal journey" stories, incorporating ideas they have gleaned from their biographical reading, from their interviews, and from class discussions they will have in Literature Circle about their thinking at this point. I will be conferencing with them individually as well helping to focus their thinking, answering questions, and working with them to edit and revise.
They will move directly to writing a second draft after their conference with me, while our discussion is still fresh in their minds. I will teach peer-editing to the class, introducing editing marks and modeling how to use them. At this juncture students will begin to try out peer-editing techniques in paired reading situations where they read and attempt to edit each other's work. The children will rewrite their drafts and once again conference with me; on this occasion we will discuss not only the writing and its content but also the peer-editing process and how it went for them. I will assist them in further refining their self-editing techniques. By now their stories should be fairly polished with only minor revisions left to be made.
Lastly, through the mirrored lens, I will introduce the topic of the migration and settlement of Spanish descendents from Mexico, traveling El Camino Real from Mexico City to el norte. I will arrange a field trip to a local "living museum" that presents ranch life as it was in Colonial New Mexico in the 17th and 18th centuries. Prior to our visit, I will show a video made by the museum that presents historical data on life of the early Spanish colonists and presents a timeline of Spanish settlement in what is now the American Southwest. Class discussion will take place prior to the trip, emphasizing the journey the colonists took in covered wagons to get from Mexico City to Santa Fe. We will talk about some of the hardships the colonists faced in making that long trek, and what provisions and tools they needed. Students will then construct maps to scale of the Camino Real in order to figure out the length of the journey from Mexico City to El Rancho de las Golondrinas, an actual journey made by many people over the course of two centuries.
I will be continuing my oral reading of Esperanza Rising and we will be about two-thirds of the way through the book by the end of the second phase of the unit.
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