The Best Resources For Hispanic Heritage Month

 by Larry Ferlazzo

Hispanic Heritage Month begins on September 15th. I never knew the reasons for the date before, but Infoplease says it’s “the anniversary of independence for five Latin American countries—Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. In addition, Mexico declared its independence on September 16, and Chile on September 18.

I thought another “The Best…” list would be in order. We teach a Latino Studies unit each year in our ninth grade English classes, and you can find the sites on this list, and many more, on my website under Latin Studies.

You might also be interest in The Best Sites For Learning About Cesar Chavez.

Here are my picks for The Best Resources For Hispanic Heritage Month (not in an order of preference). All of them provide similar resources — accessible biographies of Hispanic-Americans, history, multimedia, etc, so I’m not going to include a description for each one::

Biography Channel Hispanic Heritage

Smithsonian Institution’s Ojos

CNN Special Report: The Hispanic Experience

Scholastic’s Celebrate Hispanic Heritage

Smithsonian Latin Center’s Kids Corner

Teaching Tolerance has a good collection of lesson plans at The ABC’s Of Latino Heritage Month.

Scholastic also has a website they developed with the Hispanic Cultural Center of decent, though certainly not “cutting-edge,” lesson plans for celebrating Hispanic Heritage calledDare, Dream, Do. The same site also has additional lessons recognizing other cultures.

The Smithsonian has just unveiled their online Smithsonian Hispanic Heritage Cultural Tour. it’s a pretty neat multimedia site, which includes a lot of interactivity. In fact, users can create their own personalized tour.

American Sabor is a neat new site from The Smithsonian that’s designed to celebrate Latino music heritage. It has tons of multimedia features and a nice interactive.

The Smithsonian also has another site filled with related teaching resources.

The National Education Association has a number of related resources.

President Obama has issued a Presidential Proclamation–National Hispanic Heritage Month, 2011.

Colorin Colorado has a page of useful resources.

The New York Times Learning Network has published a very useful resource, La Vida Latina: Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month With The New Yo...

“Latino Americans” Looks Like A Great PBS Series

Feel free to share your suggestions of additional resources.