K-12 Teaching Resources

BOOKS

THE AMÉRICAS AWARD FOR CHILDREN’S AND YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE

2009 Américas Award Winners presentation
Americas Awards Ceremony 2009:

2009 Américas Award Honorable Mentions:

  • The Best Gift of All:The Legend of La Vieja Belén / El Mejor Regalo del Mundo:La Leyenda de la Vieja Belén by Julia Alvarez. Illustrated by Ruddy Nuñez. Alfaguara/Santillana, 2008.
  • Dark Dude by Oscar Hijuelos.Atheneum, 2008.
  • The Storyteller’s Candle / La velita de los cuentos by Lucía González. Illustrated by Lulu Delacre. Children’s Book Press, 2008.

2008 Américas Award Winners:

2008 American Award Honorable Mentions:

  • Nochecita by Yuyi Morales (Roering Brook Presss & Neal Porter, 2007)
  • Raining Sardines by Enrique Flores-Galbis (Roering Brook Presss, 2007)

BILINGUAL BOOKS
Del Sol Books provides the best Spanish/English/Bilingual Children's Books/CDs/DVDs
http://www.delsolbooks.com/

SCHOLASTIC TEACHERS BOOK RESOURCES: LATIN AMERICA
Scholastic web page provides resources for teachers, parents, children, librarian and school administrators. The resources include teaching resources, student activities, books and authors. Scholastic web pages with different resources to teach different Latin America subjects

  • Scholastic Teachers resources about Latin America
    http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/search?query=latin+america
  • Scholastic Latin America Music books/resources:
    http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/search?query=latin+america+music
  • Scholastic Latin America Geography books/resources:
    http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/search?query=latin+america+geography
  • Scholastic Latin America Food books/resources:
    http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/search?query=latin+america+food
  • Scholastic Latin America History books/resources:
    http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/search?query=latin+america+history
  • Scholastic Latin America Traditions books/resources:
    http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/search?query=latin+america+traditions
  • Scholastic Latin America Native Languages books/resources:
    http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/search?query=latin+america+native+languages

    • K-12 WEB RESOURCES for TEACHERS

    GENERAL

    Take Us to School!! This site, compiled and hosted by the University of Illinois Education and Social Science Library, is designed to serve the unique needs of student teachers in the state of Illinois, particularly the approximately 1,100 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign undergraduates who are student teaching each year. In a library system as large as the University of Illinois', it can sometimes be difficult to find the right resources, so we have made every effort to compile, in one place, information that will be useful for student teachers, from finding lesson plans to borrowing books at local libraries to conducting education research.
    http://www.library.uiuc.edu/edx/taketoschool/index.htm

    Solo para niños / Just for Kids
    Bilingual educational programs from Urban Programs Resource Network, University of Ilinois Extension:

    English/Spanish online resource to teach the Weather, University of Ilinois At Urbana-Champaign Extension.
    Volando con Kalami : Una aventura climática
    http://www.urbanext.uiuc.edu/kalani_sp/index2.cfm

    Spanish online resource to teach the Solar System,
    http://www.solarviews.com/span/homepage.htm

    Latin America Power Point presentations
    http://regions.pppst.com/latinamerica.html

    Art and Identity in Mexico, from the Olmec to Modern Times
    Yale-New Havens Teachers Institute, 1999, Volume II. http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1999/2/
    This curriculum unit consists of seven volumes that range from Maya and Aztec art and culture to new understandings of the works of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.
    In every section, hands-on projects play a key role: students can learn to make a work of modern Mexican folk art or play the rudiments of Mesoamerican music.
    For various grades.

    Music from Mexico : The Strachwitz Frontera Collection of Mexican and Mexican American Recordings
    The Arhoolie Foundation's Strachwitz Frontera Collection of commercially produced Mexican and Mexican-American recordings (the Frontera Collection) is the largest repository of Mexican and Mexican-American vernacular recordings in existence. http://frontera.library.ucla.edu/project.html, http://frontera.library.ucla.edu/index.html

    Cornell-Peru: Porject VICOS
    http://courses.cit.cornell.edu/vicosperu/vicos-site/index.htm
    A Virtual Tour through Time and Space: Lessons from Vicos, Peru provides a geographical and historical introduction to Vicos Peru , which is located on the western flank of the Cordillera Blanca, the highest tropical mountain range in the world.
    The tour illustrates the history of the Cornell-Peru Development Project of the 1950's using the rich visual and print materials in the Cornell Vicos archive.
    Agro-Biodiversiti in Vicos: http://courses.cit.cornell.edu/vicosperu/vicos-site/biodiversity_page_1.htm

    World Almanac for Kids 2009
    http://www.worldalmanacforkids.com/WAKI-Home.aspx
    The World Almanac for Kids provides an opportunity to browse a few pages from the 2009 edition and see what all the fuss is about. There’s a lot of new material this year 2009, including a Harry Potter retrospective, a Spanish language lesson, and information about notorious criminals in history—along with thousands of fascinating, up-to-date facts in dozens of homework-friendly (and just plain fun) topics. Click on the subjects below to sample the book… and click on the “read more” link to jump straight to a brief history of books in general.
    - South America Geography: http://www.worldalmanacforkids.com/WAKI-ViewArticle.aspx?pin=x-so150900a&article_id=213&chapter_id=5&chapter_title=Geography&article_title=South_America

    Couriers in the Inca Empire: Getting Your Message Across EDSITEment.
    http://ed2.neh.gov/view_lesson_plan.asp?id=415 This lesson will show how the Inca communicated across the vast stretches of their mountain realm, the largest empire of the pre-industrial world. It will explain how couriers carried messages along mountain-ridge roads, up and down stone steps, and over chasm-spanning footbridges. Couriers could pass a message from Quito to Cuzco in 10 days, about the same time as it takes today's modern postal service to deliver a letter between those two cities.
    For grades 3-5.

    Bananas Unpeeled! The Hidden Costs of Banana Production and Trade The Global Education Network
    http://www.global-ed.org/bananas-unpeeled.pdf
    The theme of banana production and trade is perfectly suited to a curriculum unit intended to help students gain a more global perspective of important world issues. Growing bananas, occurring as it does in Southern countries with unstable or dictatorial political situations, may have devastating effects on the land and workers.
    For grade 12.

    Resources for Teaching about the Americas (RetaNet)
    http://retanet.unm.edu
    Secondary education on Latin America and the Caribbean is the focus of this Web site that offers lesson plans, classroom modules and a multimedia database.
    Topics range from geography, identity, human rights, to herbs, food, and literature.

    World and I School
    http://www.worldandischool.com
    WorldandISchool.com is an interdisciplinary resource that encompasses a broad range of articles by scholars and experts in their fields.
    Articles are aligned to each state’s standards for social studies, language, arts, and science.
    Among the highlights are the Teachers’ Corner, where you will find over 2,000 lesson plans, and
    The Spanish Page:http://www.worldandischool.com/spanish/
    which presents advanced and simplified versions of articles in Spanish and audio clips and exercises, as well as vocabulary, idioms, phrasal verbs, a comprehensive section for beginners, and cultural studies of Latin American countries in English.

    Latin America: Our Neighbors at Home and to the South
    http://schools.portnet.k12.ny.us/~rmclean/FOV1-0003FE96/
    Especially designed to assist fifth-grade instructors in teaching about Latin America,
    this 10-week topical unit includes lesson plans and activities.
    In Population Data Activity, students analyze numerical data about countries;
    and in Guatemalan Market Place, Three Regions of Latin America, and Newspaper Lessons,
    the goal is to promote multicultural awareness and an appreciation for diversity in both the local community and the world.

    Outreach World
    Outreach World AIS a comprehensive one-stop resource for teaching international and area studies and foreign languages in the precollegiate classroom:
    http://www.outreachworld.org/index.asp
    Outreach Word, Latin America: http://www.outreachworld.org/resource.asp?curriculumid=151

    Hispanic Cultures of the Americas
    Summer Institute: Teaching Resources http://www.educ.msu.edu/teachglobal/Americas/links.html

    Colorin Colorado
    Bilingual website for teachers and parents of English Language Learners! Here you'll find lots of articles, resources, and ideas to support ELLs at school andat home. http://www.colorincolorado.org/

    The Literacy Center Education Network
    Free, professionally-designed, education material to preschool-age children. Utilizing the power of the Internet, we aim to distribute education material directly to children in their homes, libraries, and schools. http://www.literacycenter.net/about_us/index.htm

    International Potato Center (CIP)
    http://www.cipotato.org/
    The International Potato Center(CIP) seeks to reduce poverty and achieve food security on a sustained basis in developing countries through scientific research and related activities on potato, sweetpotato, and other root and tuber crops and on the improved management of natural resources in the Andes and other mountain areas.

    CURRICULUM UNITS

    Kindergarten: Mexico

  • Mexico for Kids (from the Government of Mexico): http://www.elbalero.gob.mx/index_kids.html
  • Kindergarten Kids: http://khs.westport.k12.ct.us/diamandis/Kids_Kindergarten.htm
  • Aztec Sunstone: http://home.freeuk.com/elloughton13/sunstone.htm
  • Lesson Plans: http://atozteacherstuff.com/Themes/Mexico/ and http://www.eduref.org/Virtual/Lessons/Social_Studies/World_History/WRH0012.html

    • 3rd Grade: Guatemala

  • World Almanac for Kids: http://www.worldalmanacforkids.com/explore/nations/guatemala.html
  • Gigglepotz: http://www.gigglepotz.com/maya.htm
  • Belize, Guatemala Lesson Plans: http://www.worldtrek.org/odyssey/teachers/guatlessons.html
  • Lesson Plan on Rigoberta Menchú for Third Grade: http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/2000/1/00.01.02.x.html

    • 5th Grade: Brazil

  • Rainforest Alliance: http://www.rainforest-alliance.org/programs/education/teachers/curriculum/index.html
  • CIA: https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/br.html
  • BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/country_profiles/1227110.stm
  • UIUC Capoeira Club: https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/ro/www/CapoeiraClubatUIUC
  • Lesson Plans on Brazil: http://www1.lanic.utexas.edu/project/etext/llilas/outreach/fulbright04/Cobb_ElementaryLessons.pdf and http://www.familiesoftheworld.com/teacherguide/brazilTguide.pdf

    • LATIN AMERICAN NETWORK INFORMATION CENTER (lanic)

    The Latin American Network Information Center (LANIC) is affiliated with the Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies (LLILAS) at the University of Texas at Austin. LANIC has received funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and UT Austin's College of Liberal Arts. LANIC is a key component of the International Information Systems, also based at UT Austin.

    LANIC's mission is to facilitate access to Internet-based information to, from, or on Latin America. Our target audience includes people living in Latin America, as well as those around the world who have an interest in this region. While many of our resources are designed to facilitate research and academic endeavors, our site has also become an important gateway to Latin America for primary and secondary school teachers and students, private and public sector professionals, and just about anyone looking for information about this important region.

  • Latin America Maps: http://lanic.utexas.edu/la/region/map/
  • Society and Culture in Latin America: http://lanic.utexas.edu/subject/society/
  • K-12 Education: http://lanic.utexas.edu/la/region/k-12/
  • Food, Recipies and Nutrition: http://lanic.utexas.edu/la/region/food/
  • Complete list of Subjects: http://lanic.utexas.edu/info/sitemap/

    • TEACHING ABOUT ... in Latin America and the Caribbean

    Illinois International Review

    Resources (past editions of Update)

    Outreach Links and Listservs