Resources for International Women's Day or Units on Women

Are you looking for resources for a unit on women, or more specific on Hispanic women, to showcase their role in history and their contributions to society in science, medicine, exploration, sports, etc? 

In my Spanish 4+ class, I have a unit simple titled "Las Mujeres" which introduces my students to several hispanic women that they most likely are not aware of, and also provide reading material for them in Spanish on women that they have learned about in their other classes such as art, Frida Kahlo; social studies, Sonia Sotomayor and Marie Reiche (originally from Germany); science, Ellen Ochoa; and music, Gloria Estefan & Celia Cruz.

These are some of my favorite sources and how I use them in class:


Cinco mujeres latinas que tú debes conocer

This is a resource from The Comprehensible Classroom (Martina Bex), that I purchased from TeachersPayTeachers last fall. The biographies are of Rigoberta Menchú, Michelle Bachelet, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Eva Perón, and the Mirabal sisters.

First, I printed out the pdf of the powerpoint slides and posted them around the room.  I divided the students into five group, with 2-3 students per group. (I used this with my small class of 13 students. **For larger classes, read the comment at the end of this section for suggestions.) Then I gave each group 5 pieces of construction paper - each group had a different color.

Each group went to one of the posted photos and information and read the information. Then they decided which fact/sentence from the information they wanted to sketch on the construction paper. They completed the sketch, underlined the phrase or sentence that they sketched, and taped their sketch next to the posted information.

After students had circulated through the five stations, they returned to their seats and we talked about each women, with one person from each group explaining how their sketch related to that woman's life.

The materials also include documents with a shortened version on each woman with short comprehension activities for students to complete. 
**If my class had more students, I would have altered this activity either by providing those documents and having students complete them in between completing the sketches, OR half of the students would have completed the sketches and the other half of the students would have written two comprehension questions per woman and the students would ask those comprehension questions to their classmates.

Novels  
Frida Kahlo, by Kristy Placido


The novel, Frida Kahlo, is the backbone of my "Las Mujeres" unit. It is a 58-page biography about Frida Kahlo in which Kristy took care to include aspects of Frida's growing up years that will be of special interest to high school students (such as Frida caring for a family of rats, the mischievous acts at her school, and her struggle to "fit in" with high society). 

This is the first semester that I have the Frida Kahlo Teacher's Guide from Fluency Matters to use when reading the novel. It is packed full of extension activities, Can-Do Statements, comprehension questions that elicit higher-order thinking, Reader's Theater scripts and a fun, interactive section called Shake it Up! and more. To my surprise, I only realized after using the teacher guide for a few chapters that there is also an Online Supplement to the Teacher's Guide, especially useful for teachers in 1:1 schools. You don't need to come up with the ideas - they're all provided for you with detailed explanations. You'll save yourself hours of planning time with this resource!

In addition to the Teacher's Guide, many teachers have freely shared their ideas and activities to go with this novel. The first two are my current favorites and the others are additional resources to check out:

Kristy Placido - Incorporating Selfies and Self Portraits with Frida Kahlo unit

Somewhere to Share, Carrie Toth - Snap Chat with Frida Kahlo novel

Several posts from this blog: 
- Autorretratos inspired by Frida Kahlo novel
- Novels, Making Connections

Mundo de Pepito - Frida Kahlo in the Elementary Classroom (get inspired from these activities and adjust them to work in a secondary classroom)

The Feisty Language Teacher - Frida! Frida! Read All About Her! 


Vidas Impactantes, by Krista Placido 
Vida's Impactantes is another novel in which you will find biographies of hispanic women that have made a notable impact on society. You'll find information on Celia Cruz, Maria Reiche, and Azucena Villaflor. I've read this book, several times, and I'm in the process of pulling biographies of several people and inserting that into other Spanish 4 and Spanish 4+ units. I don't have the Teacher's Guide yet, but I know it will also be an invaluable resource.

As a side note, as you can see by the photo of the book cover on the right, this book also has 3 biographies of hispanic men!

A-Z Reading resources
If you have a subscription to A-Z reading, you automatically have a nice selection of online readers of famous women.  My students do SSR several times a week in which students choose a novel to read. During two weeks of the "Las Mujeres" unit, I request that students read the stories on A-Z reading (you can print them out or upload a pdf of the books to a learning management system such as Schoology).  

Several titles of books that are in Spanish are: Amelia Earhart, Bessie Coleman, Gloria Estefan, Harriet Tubman, Helen Keller, Hillary Clinton, Hispanoamericanos Famosos, Mujeres Estrellas (Mia Hamm, Venus & Serena Williams, & Bethany Hamilton), Primeras Damas (Eleanor Roosevelt, Jacqueline Kennedy, Hillary Rodham Clinton), Ruby Bridges, Sally Ride, Sonia Sotomayor. See, I told you there were a lot of books on women!

I'm sure these resources are only the tip of the iceberg! 
If you have favorite resources related to hispanic women, please share, as I'm always open to learning!

Autorretratos inspired by Frida Kahlo novel

A few weeks ago my Spanish 4 class finished reading Kristy Placido's novel, "Frida Kahlo".  I'm a fan of fiction novels for my students, but when I heard Kristy had written a non-fiction novel on Frida Kahlo for Spanish students, I quickly started making plans to add the novel to our curriculum.  

The book is solid, packed with information about Frida Kahlo and her journey to become an artist and the challenges she faced throughout her life.  I was a fan of Frida Kahlo before we read the book, and I'm even more of a fan now.

Due to my schedule becoming busier than I had anticipated (as happens often), some of the extended activities for the novel that I had brainstormed didn't take form. However, the one activity that I was looking forward to doing was the autorretratos activity listed on Kristy's blog HERE. Check it out!!! I followed her instructions (how great is it when you find something useful for class that someone else has already designed and shared) for printing the pictures and the students spent part of a class period letting their inner artist soar.

After they were finished, I put their artwork in a sheet protector sleeve and displayed their autorretratos in the bulletin board in the hallway for other students to enjoy. 

Novels: Making Connections and 4-1-1 Comprehension Checks

Reading novels is a staple in every level in our World Language department. Below are two new approaches I used with reading a novel. 

1. Connecting to the character in the story. 
This year is the first time my students are reading the TPRS Publishing novel, Frida Kahlo, by Kristy Placido.  Before we started reading, I gave them the paper below.  They read the statements and responded to the scenarios on another paper that had 15 blank squares.  

The students did NOT know that these statements were events that happened in Frida Kahlo's life or were similar experiences (such as #9 & #10), that we were soon going to read in the novel. 

I created similar events (#9 & #10)
in order to provide examples that are plausible for my students.  (Ex: Frida called Diego out on his relationship with an art model when he was painting at her school. The possibility of our school commissioning an artist to paint a mural on our school wall is very unlikely so my example is the student's boss, who is married, has a romantic relationship with another person.)

After each chapter that mentioned one, or more, of the examples in the chart, we discussed the students' answers and compared them to Frida Kahlo's actions.  If what the student had written was similar to Frida's actions, they circled the square. If it was different than Frida's actions, they drew a bold "X" over the square.  After discussing all 15 examples, we were quickly able to identify which students could relate to events in Frida's life.  

2. Checking comprehension with Higher Order Thinking 
There are (a few) times that I assign homework for my students to read a chapter or two from the novel we are reading together in class.  A twist on checking their comprehension of the chapter (and also to see if they read the chapter), is to give them the 4-1-1 Comprehension Check.

To create a 4-1-1 Comprehension Check, you will need to choose 4 sentences from the chapter(s) that the students read for homework (or that they read in class). Then add a sentence of something that DIDN'T happen in the text, but is something that could have happened.  Write another sentence of something that DIDN'T happen and IS NOT a logical option of what could have happened in the chapter.  

4-1-1 Comprehension Check - ch6 of Frida Kahlo

Type the sentences in random order.  The students have to find the 4 sentences with information that occurred in the text they read. (If they are sentences with a clear chronological order, ask students to put them in order.)  For the remaining two sentences, students determine which one didn't happen but could have, and which sentence is not a logical choice of a possible event in the book and then they must DEFEND their reason for their choices with information in that particular chapter or previous chapters.  

The above example is from chapter 6 of "Frida Kahlo".  The two sentences that are NOT from the novel are B and E.  The book does not mention that Frida told her sister about the rats, but since Frida was closest to her younger sister and they spent a lot of time together, it would be a logical possibility that Frida would tell her sister about the rats.

The sentence that is not a logical possibility is E because if students read the chapter they know that Frida was hiding the rats from her mother. Frida would not want to give the rats to her mother as a gift because her mother would not agree to permit Frida to continue caring for them. 

Another chapter in Frida Kahlo that is perfect for a 4-1-1 Comprehension Check is chapter 7 that lists the mischievous acts of Frida and her friends at la Escuela Nacional Preparatoria.

This 4-1-1 Comprehension Check is beneficial in that students have to separate fact from fiction. If they read the chapter and understood what they were reading, it should be a fairly simple task for them to find the two sentences that are not from the text.  The higher order thinking skills are needed to determine which sentence is/is not a possibility, and then defend the answer using information already known about the character or the plot.

The 4-1-1 Comprehension Check can be used as a formative or summative assessment.