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|Project Title: ||Spanish Poetry Books for Latin American Children|
|School Year: ||2007|
|School - District:||North Quincy High - Quincy|
|Contact Name:||Contact ESE for more information|
|Grades:||10, 11, 12|
|Community Need:||Human Needs|
|Brief Description of SL Project: |
Spanish students at North Quincy High School focused on an international CSL project. Approximately 100 students in Spanish 3 Honors and Spanish 4 Standard classes wrote original poems that were corrected, decorated, and made into four 12 x 12 books. The completed books were sent to an orphanage in Guatemala.
|The Community Need the Project is Meeting:|
Because of the endemic poverty in Guatemala, children at the orphanage lack most of the basic materials for early brain stimulation and early learning that we take for granted in the United States.
|Service Component: |
The service component of the project was providing supplies to an orphanage in Guatemala. Students spent over a week writing and revising their poems, in addition to decorating pieces of card stock to make the poetry books visually appealing to young children. In addition to providing the poetry books, we were also able to purchase crib toys for infants in the orphanage, as well as a small CD player and Spanish-language children’s CDs for the older children at the facility. All of the items were brought to Guatemala by Wide Horizons for Children, a Waltham-based adoption and social service agency. While Wide Horizons for Children assisted us in finding a facility that needed reading materials and other supplies, all of the project planning was completed by students and teachers.
|Connections with Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks: |
The project addresses the following Massachusetts Foreign Language Curriculum Frameworks:
Standard 3.4 Presentational Communication: Describe people, places, and things; Standard 4: Cultures: 4.3 Identify distinctive cultural aspects of the target culture presented in stories, dramas, films, and photographs, 4.5 Identify distinctive contributions made by people in the target culture. Standard 6.6: Cultural Comparisons: Discuss basic needs for people for food, clothing, and shelter and compare how they have been met in various cultures; Standard 7.1: Connections: Obtain information and knowledge related to other disciplines from sources in the target language. Standard 8.1: Communities: Apply knowledge of the target language and culture beyond the classroom setting.
We assessed students’ learning through a rubric made in advance of the project that evaluated both the rough draft and final version of the students’ poems. Prior to completing the project, students took an exam on the movie Men with Guns, which provided them with a better understanding of the desperate poverty people are facing in Central America. Fitting this project into the curriculum of this class provided the students with an opportunity to use their Spanish skills in a meaningful way. They put a great deal of time and effort into creating poems and illustrations that would capture the imagination of children and encourage them to read.
|How Youth Voice Helps Shape Project:|
Students wrote letters to the children who would receive their books to introduce themselves and ask the Guatemalan children about their lives. Students selected their own poetry topics and decorations to be age-appropriate for the children in the orphanage. Students also watched and discussed the movie Men with Guns, which provided them with a better understanding of the desperate poverty people are facing in Central America.
|Student Reflection Component: |
Students could reflect on their activities through a discussion and/or journal writing about the experience of creating the poetry books for the orphanage and what they learned about the Spanish language as well as poverty in Latin America as a result.
|Community Partners Involved: |
Wide Horizons for Children, a Waltham-based adoption and social service agency, assisted us in finding a facility that needed reading materials and other supplies. Wide Horizons for Children also brought all of the items to Guatemala.
|Demonstration/Celebration of Students' Work: |
No celebration activities occurred specifically for this project.
|Evaluation of Project's Impact:|
Students could evaluate the impact of the project by contacting the orphanage in Guatemala to learn if (and how) the poetry books and other materials were used by the children and how the provided materials supported the orphanage in general.
|Challenges/Solutions Identified by District:|
* NOTE: This project summary was written by the district/community. Any text in italics was added or modified by the Department (ESE). Most of these projects were supported with Learn & Serve America funds distributed through the ESE.