   
|
|
|
Family Stories
Students interview family members about important events
or moments in their family's history and then write a personal
narrative describing the events and their significance.
30 minutes a day over several days |
whole class; individual |
| CA
Writing Standard 2.1: Students write narratives
providing a context within which an action takes place,
including well-chosen details to develop the plot, and
providing insight into why the selected incident is
memorable. |
 |
Paper; pencils
or pens; tape recorder and cassette tape |
|
Plan
| Discuss with students how
Antonio's Card / La tarjeta de Antonio
tells the story of an important event or turning point
in Antonio's life. Explain to them that they will now
have the opportunity to write about an important event
or moment in the life of a family member. |
|
| Share an event that was important
in your history or the history of a family member. Then
engage students in a discussion about which members
of their family they might interview to learn about
an important story or series of events. |
|
| Brainstorm with students a
list of interview questions they might ask to identify
and learn about an important event in the life of a
person as well as the context surrounding that event.
Questions might include: What is one difficult challenge
or problem you or your family has faced? What happened?
How did you resolve the problem? Describe your feelings.
Have students copy the list of questions. |
|
| Ask students to interview
a member of their family, using the list of questions
as a starting point. Tell students that they must be sensitive during this interview process. They need to respect the person that they are interviewing and respect their privacy especially if the person is not comfortable talking about a specific issue or answering a question. If the equipment is available,
encourage students to tape-record the interview so they
do not have to spend the entire conversation taking
notes. Suggest that students do take notes about the
most important information as they listen, including
what happened, why it happened, and how the person felt
about it. Or they might write up their notes immediately
after the interview. |
|
| Encourage students to use
their notes and the tape recording to make an outline
of the key elements of the event, including information
about why it happened, how the person felt about it,
and why it was important. |
Draft
|
| Have students write a personal
narrative about the event as if they were telling the
story to someone who does not know them or their family.
|
Revise
|
| Have students exchange their
drafts with a partner. Partners should read and review
each other's work, jotting down any questions that come
to mind. Have reviewers check to see that the writer
has included details that help create a sense of place
and time as well as details that help develop the action.
Also ask reviewers to make sure that reasons are clearly
stated as to why the event described is memorable or
important. When the review is finished, have students
return the narratives to their partners, who should
use the editorial questions and notes as they revise
their draft. |
Edit
|
Ask students to read through
their drafts another time, correcting errors in spelling,
grammar, and punctuation. |
Publish
|
Have students prepare final
versions of their narratives that incorporate all the
changes they have made. You may wish to have students
display their narratives along with a portrait of the
moment. (For a portrait activity, see the Family
Snapshots activity, an additional activity
in the Art section of this Teacher's Guide.)
|
Other Writing Activities
|
Acrostic Poems:
Students create acrostic poems in English or Spanish,
or in both languages, with the words family/familia,
lonely/solitario, or other important story words
of their choosing. The letters of the chosen word or
words become the first letters in each line of the poem.
|
|
For the Important
People in Our Lives: Students draft the
text for a card or cards they would like to write honoring
important people in their lives. This activity should
be done in conjunction with the Cards
from the Heart activity in the Art
section of this Teacher's Guide. |
|
One Life, One
Story: Students interview and then write
brief biographies of the important women in their lives.
|
|
Comparing Families:
Students create Venn diagrams to compare their families
with Antonio's and then write a few paragraphs explaining
the similarities and the differences. |
Family Tree
Students explore the diverse structures of their families
and learn that there are many different kinds of families.
45 minutes a day for two days |
individual; whole class |
| CA
Social Studies Standard 3.1: Students describe the
physical and human geography and use maps, tables, graphs,
photographs, and charts to organize information about
people, places, and environments in a spatial context.
|
| |
Paper; pens or
pencils; chart paper and markers |
|
- Have a volunteer
read aloud the first three sentences on page 6 of Antonio's
Card / La tarjeta de Antonio. Write on the
board the following sentence: "Parents of all shapes and
sizes come to greet their children." Read it aloud. Point
out that just as parents come in all shapes and sizes,
so do families. Then create, display, and discuss a family
tree for Antonio like the one below. The roots should
show what ideas are important to Antonio's family. The trunk
should list the people who live in his home. The branches
should list all the other people who are important to
Antonio.
- For homework, ask students
to make similar family trees of their own families.
- Ask for volunteers to
share their family trees with the class. Remember that
some students may be uncomfortable revealing such information,
so be sure all students understand that sharing is voluntary.
Discuss the variety of families that are represented in
your class. You may want to add additional trees for families
you know, as this could add other family structures to
the discussion.
Other Social Studies Activities
|
Mapping Families:
Have students identify Guadalajara, Mexico, on a map
to show where part of Antonio's family comes from. Then
ask students to find out the place or places their parents/caregivers
and their ancestors come from. Use small self-stick
notes to show on a large world map or globe the countries
or cities of origin of your students' families along
with the location of your community. Discuss the similarities
and differences among the paths the families have followed
to arrive in your community. |
|
Family Time line:
Ask each student to create a time line of the important
events in their family's history. You might suggest
that they consider questions such as the following when
compiling the entries for the time line: When were
you born? When were your parents/caregivers and siblings
born? When did your family first come to this community?
When did other important events in your family's history
occur? |
|
Celebrating Diverse
Families: Show students the video That's
a Family (see Resources). Ask them to take
notes about what they see in a double journal entry,
listing facts from the video in one column and their
thoughts or feelings about that information in the other
column. After students have watched the video, have
them share their entries with a partner. Then engage
the whole class in a discussion about what they learned.
|
Cards from the Heart
Students use a wax-resist technique to create cards for
the important caregivers in their lives, including special
messages to those they love.
40 min. |
individual |
| CA
Visual Arts Standard 2.4: Students create a work
of art based on the observations of objects and scenes
in daily life, emphasizing value changes. |
|
|
Paper (card stock,
if available), crayons, pencils, watercolor paints,
brushes |
|
- Discuss the image and text of the card Antonio made
for his mother and Leslie for Mother's Day (p. 15). Explain
to students that they will now have an opportunity to
make a card for a person or people who are important in
their lives. Have students suggest various types of people
they might make cards for. Then ask them each to choose
a special person in their lives for whom they will make
a card.
- Have students fold a sheet of card stock or regular
paper in half twice—once lengthwise and once widthwise—to
create a card.
- Have students draw in pencil the outline of an image
they want to send to the special person they have chosen.
Encourage them to use an image that shows something special
they share with the person. They should include a message
on the inside of the card. (If they have completed the
For the Important People in Our Lives activity in the
Other Writing Activities
part of the Language Arts section of this Teacher’s
Guide.) Point out that they may also want to include words
on the cover of the card. Once the outline and message
are complete, have students trace over in crayon the elements
or features of the card that they would like to highlight.
- Once the crayon work is complete, students should paint
their cards with watercolor paints. Provide them with
a place to set their cards to dry.
- When students' cards are finished, you may want to
create a classroom display so they may share their work
before delivering their cards. Remind students that sharing
is voluntary. They do not have to share their cards with
the class.
Other Art Activities
|
Family Snapshots:
Have students create paintings that illustrate an important
moment in their family history, such as the one they
wrote about in their personal narratives for the Family
Stories activity in the Language
Arts section of this Teacher's Guide. You might
want to have students look at the book Family
Pictures / Cuadros de familia
by Carmen Lomas Garza to get ideas for their paintings.
|
|
Family Collage:
Once students have read and discussed Antonio's
Card / La tarjeta de Antonio, they may
wish to create more collages of diverse families similar
to the one you did in the Getting
the Classroom Ready section near the beginning
of this Teacher's Guide. |
|
Word Collage:
Discuss Antonio's love of words. Then ask students to
choose a word they enjoy using (preferably a noun).
Have them type the word in a word processing document
using at least 18-point type. Ask them to cut and paste
the word into the document multiple times to create
one or two pages of the word. Have them print the document
and then cut out each word. They should then draw an
outline of the object named by the word on a separate
sheet of paper and paste the cutout words onto the page
in the shape of the outline (for example, the word sunshine
might be glued in the shape of a sun with radiating
rays). Next, students can fill in the spaces with collage
materials. Finally, they can create a gallery to share
their word art.
 |
|
The Artist's Studio:
Have students draw a diagram of an artist's studio using
Leslie's studio as a model (on pages 24 and 25). Encourage
them to include equipment and materials they think an
artist would use. Ask them to label the elements in
their diagrams. |
|
Words in Art:
Examine with students the images made by Antonio (on
page 14) and Leslie (on pages 26 and 27). Draw students'
attention to the creative use of words in the art. Then
have students make their own works of art in which they
incorporate words creatively. |
Family Math
Students collect and graph data about their families and
then analyze the information they have gathered.
40 min. |
whole class; pairs; small groups |
| CA
Mathematics (Mathematical Reasoning) Standard 2.3:
Students use a variety of methods, such as words, numbers,
symbols, charts, graphs, tables, diagrams, and models,
to explain mathematical reasoning. |
|
|
Paper (lined and
graph); pencils or pens; crayons |
|
- Have students name all the
members of Antonio's family. (Antonio, his mother, Leslie,
his grandparents, and his father) Use this information
to come up with the number of people in his family that
are mentioned in the story. (6) Then have students think
about the size of their own family or other families they
know. If you have done the Family
Tree activity in the Social Studies
section of this Teacher's Guide, you might have students
refer to their family trees to help them count the number
of people in their families. You might suggest that they
come up with two numbers: one for the number of people
who live in their home, and the other for the total number
of people in their family, including all those they consider
family who live outside their homes.
- Have students work in pairs
to gather the data about family size from all the other
students in the class. They should record the information
in two lists.
- Ask partners to use the information to create bar graphs
on graph paper showing the number of people in a family
along the horizontal axis and the number of families of
each size along the vertical axis. They can use the crayons
to make each bar a different color.
- After students have compiled
the data and completed their bar graphs, ask them to work
in small groups to answer the following questions:
- Which family size is the
most common? the least common?
- What is the largest number
of members in a family?
- What is the smallest number
of members in a family?
- Do you think the outcome
of this activity would be different if the activity
was done in a different classroom? Why? What if we
did it in a different country? Explain your thinking.
- What conclusions can you
draw from the information you have gathered?
Other Math Activities
|
Greeting Card Math:
Have students work in small groups to do math computations
related to starting a business that makes handmade greeting
cards for Mother's Day and other special days. To do
so, ask students to calculate the answers to questions
such as these: How much would the materials cost
to make one card? 150 cards? How much would you charge
per card? How much money would you make after selling
cards to all of your classmates? to all the students
in your school? |
|
The Art of Angles:
Have students work in pairs to carefully examine the
story illustrations to find as many angles as they can
in the artwork. Ask them to decide whether each angle
they find is a right angle, greater than a right angle,
or less than a right angle. Then have partners compare
what they found to the results of another pair. |
Experimenting with Colors
Students make predictions about and then experiment with
mixing primary colors to create secondary colors.
45 min. |
whole class; small group |
| CA
Science Standard 5.d: Students predict the outcome
of a simple investigation and compare the results with
the prediction. CA Visual Arts Standard 1.1:
Students describe how artists use tints and shades in
painting. |
|
|
Primary color
(red, yellow, blue) vegetable dye and tempera
paints; wax paper; paper; pens; brushes | |
- Discuss with students the terms primary color
and secondary color. Then engage them in a discussion
of the importance of color in the artwork of Antonio's
Card / La tarjeta de Antonio. Point out
that color is important from the points of view of both
the story's fictional artist, Leslie, and the book's real
artist, Cecilia Concepción Álvarez. Page through the story
with students and discuss the colors that are used. Identify
primary and secondary colors as well as any that are in
between. Discuss also how the artist uses tints
(colors to which white has been added) and shades
(colors to which black has been added) in order to produce
lighter and darker versions of various colors.
- Have students work in small groups. Ask group members
to place three well-spaced drops of blue vegetable dye
on a sheet of wax paper. Ask them to predict what will
happen if they mix a drop of yellow with one of the blue
drops. Then have them add the yellow drop to test their
prediction. Below the result they should write 1 to
1. Next, ask students to repeat the process, but
this time making and testing their predictions about mixing
two drops of yellow with one blue drop. Below this result
they should write 1 to 2. They should repeat
the process a third time for the ratio of 1 to 3 and write
1 to 3 below it.
- Give students the opportunity to conduct similar experiments
on their own in which they combine varying amounts of
the primary color dyes to create other colors. Once they
have had time to conduct several experiments, bring the
class together to discuss their observations and conclusions.
Other Science Activities
|
Story Colors:
Provide students with tempera paints in the primary
colors and black and white. Ask them to choose an illustration
from the story and then experiment with mixing different
colors to create colors similar to the ones used in
that illustration. Ask students to keep track of the
combination of colors that they used to create each
new color. Students can then share their results. |
|
Parts of a Tree:
Ask students to look at the pictures of trees on pages
9, 14, and 27 of the story. Then ask them to make their
own diagram of a tree, labeling each part and describing
how it contributes to the growth and survival of the
tree. Suggest that students conduct library or Internet
research to answer any questions they have. |
|
|
|
|
