What is Hispanic Heritage Month?
Every year Hispanic Heritage Month or Latinx Heritage Month is celebrated from September 15 – October 15. It is a time to honor, celebrate, and lift up Hispanic Americans. We know that you are hopefully doing this all year, but HHM is the perfect opportunity to infuse your Spanish class with even more Hispanic culture.
Hispanic Heritage Month is especially a great time to support authentic resources from Hispanic creators. For example, here are 10 books by Latinx authors to read. Or this is a great time to invite Hispanic parents, teachers, students, and community members in to share their diverse experiences with your classes.
Here are some resources to plan activities for Hispanic Heritage Month in Spanish class.
Hispanic Heritage Music Madness
For the past 7 years, I have used music as my main vehicle for showing the representation of the diverse Spanish-speaking world during Hispanic Heritage Month.
Each year I have created a collection of 22 songs, each representing a Spanish-speaking country. This means there is one song for every school day of Hispanic Heritage Month. It is a great way to introduce where in the world speaks Spanish, nationalities, geography, pop culture, music genres, and fun! These editable Google music slides for Hispanic Heritage Month could be used as a Para Empezar class starter each day, or as a Brain Break.
If you do not want to spread the HHM music slides throughout the whole month, it could be a stand-alone lesson for a couple of days, perfect for a substitute. You could post the slideshow on Google Classroom for students to go through and watch the videos at their own pace, having them rank the songs, color a map where their favorites are from, or create their own music bracket playoff with a winner at the end. I found a lot of new artists and groups from the Spanish-speaking world while creating this that I hope you enjoy as much as I do!
Hispanic Heritage Music Bracket for Spanish Class
Over the years, many teachers have used this resource as a fun, competitive music bracket. Learn more about how to do that in this blog post. Over the years I have created a bracket each year. The newest version with the most diverse and up-to-date music is HHM7 for 2022. Or you can get the growing bundle that currently has 8 sets of 1 song per country. Get it here. If you participate, please post and share your bracket and tag @mis.claseslocas so I can see them all!
**Update – If you teach younger students or at a more conservative school, check out YOUNG 1 song from each country instead!
Country of the day – travel videos – NEW
By request, some teachers wanted to do more to introduce each country of the day. I created a slideshow that has the country, capital, nationality, two maps, and a travel video for all 22 Spanish-speaking places. You could combine this slideshow & your song of the day slideshow to really dig deeper into each place for Hispanic Heritage Month. Or if you want multiple options for each country, you could get the culture slides bundle.
Once again, If you do not want to spread it out, this slideshow of travel videos could be used as a 1-2 day lesson or sub-plan for cultural exploration.
Films for Hispanic Heritage Month
Everyone could use and deserves a little break and authentic films for Spanish class do just that. In this uncertain school year, you deserve ALL the Breaks! Input in Spanish, while learning about the diverse cultures of the Spanish world is a win-win.
It all depends on your goals as to what audio and subtitles you use. For upper-level classes, I like to use Spanish audio and Spanish subtitles. For novice classes, I prefer Spanish audio and English subtitles. The only times I use English audio is for culture or maybe early Exploratory class, but with using a culture-rich film. If you are looking for documentaries, check out these 5.
You can find more about all of these appropriate films in this blog post or my movie guide bundle here. Here are a few of my favorite appropriate films for Spanish class.
- Colombia – Encanto & Encanto blog post
- Cuba – Vivo & Vivo blog post
- Mexico – El Camino de Xico & Xico blog post
- Peru – Pachamama & Pachamama blog post
- Spain – Ferdinand & Ferdinand Blog post
- U.S. – Selena & Selena blog post
How to Incorporate More Culture in Spanish Class
This NEW blog post has lots of ideas of ways to incorporate more culture in Spanish class for Hispanic Heritage Month & beyond. If you are looking to diversify your definition of Latinx Heritage Month with diverse representation check out these blog posts
- Afro-Latinx resources
- Pride in Spanish class
- Asian-Latinx Resources
- Indigenous Peoples in Spanish class
Secondary Spanish Space – a collection of ideas
This post has many ideas for the whole month organized by music, art, culture, reading, and more.
South America Geography & Peru Mini Book – Spanish Mama
Spanish Mama also has an adorable printable mini book in both Spanish and English for learning about Peru.
Spanish Culture Project
If you want students to dig deeper into Hispanic Heritage Month, I have a culture project for beginning Spanish students. Also, here is a free brainstorming list of 50+ cultural topics to explore. This culture project would be a perfect activity for students to complete with a substitute while you are away at your local fall language teacher conference or an emergency sub plan.
Originally posted 9.12.16 by Allison Wienhold & most recently updated 9.6.22
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