Grade Levels: 9-12

Subject Area(s): Spanish

The purpose of this lesson is to expose students to the concept of cognates and for them to learn Portuguese vocabulary related to the home and family through the learning of Spanish.

Lesson 1

Lesson 2

Essential Question: How does one introduce oneself? How does one ask for and give basic information? How does one express likes and dislikes? How does one describe oneself and others?

Subject Areas: Portuguese Language, Social Studies

Author(s): Jamie L. Patterson

Grade Levels: 5–8, 9–12, College

Lesson Plan

Corrupción política: una comparación entre Guatemala y Brasil

Subject Area: Spanish, AP Spanish

The goal of this lesson is to discuss the topic of political corruption in Latin America, specifically in Guatemala with a comparison to Brazil.

Essential Question: How have communitites been affected by social and political challeges and their resolutions?

Author(s): Andrea Beebe López

Lesson Plan

Grade Levels: 9–12

Presentation on Brazilian culture by Vanderbilt Professor Emanuelle Oliveira.  Includes basic Portuguese language and information on race, class, politics, and music in Brazil.

Author(s): Emanuelle Oliveira

Grade Levels: 9–12, College

Lesson Plan

This lesson is based on the film Central Station and can be used to supplement the film. This lesson demonstrates the significance of letter writing and communicating in different cultures.

Students will:

• Explore the tradition of letter writing
• Explore the problem of illiteracy
• Explore the letter writer and groups that use this service

Author(s): Valerie Haskins

Grade Levels: 5–8, 9–12, College

Lesson Plan

This unit is to be used with the current AP Spanish Language & Culture themes – Global Challenges with emphasis in environmental issues, specifically recycling. Excellent lesson plan for teaching about the impact of trash on the environment.

Objectives:

• Students go through their kitchen garbage and make list of all the items found.
• Students decide if they could recycle some of the items and why they did not.
• What kind of trash they have and what does it say about them – consumer habits. 
• Students lead discussions on cultural comparisons on how waste is handled in Latin American countries

Essential Questions: 

• What impact do human activities have on the environment?
• How does trash affect humans and the environment?
• How do you promote caring for the environment? 
• Where does our trash go? – read USA articles vs Latin American country
• Where are our landfills? – who works in this landfills? – same as above
• Why is recycling emphasized in some cities more than others? – compare with Latin American country

Author(s): Andrea Beebe López, Angela Curtis, Rob Herring

Grade Levels: 9–12

Introduction to Portuguese presenetations used at the Somos Nos: Diverse Brazil Summer Institute in June of 2016 at Vanderbilt Unviersity. This course was designed by Lunara Gonçalves, University of Georgia from the University of Georgia.

Day 1 - Introduction to Portuguese 

Day 2 - Introduction to Portuguese

Day 3 - Introduction to Protuguese

Introduction to Portuguese Handout

Objective: Students will evaluate a situation regarding coffee farms in Brazil, accounting for risks and benefits.

Author(s): Global Perspectives in Education

Grade Levels: 9–12, College

Lesson Plan

An interactive and interdisciplinary presentation on the famous Brazilian holiday of Carnaval that takes place each year in February. This workshop focuses on the costumes, music, and dance that take place, as well as a brief historical overview of the origins of the celebrations and its geographic diversity.

Author(s): Andrea Delgado

Grade Levels: K–4

Lesson Plan

Educators attended a four-day summer workshop focused on integrating the language and culture of Brazil into the K-12 classroom. Brazil, Latin America’s largest country, has recently gone through tremendous change in the last decade. From hosting two mega-events, the World Cup (2014) and the Summer Olympics (2016) to recently impeaching their president Dilma Rousseff, Brazil serves as an interesting case study for developing countries that can add to the understanding of your students’ understanding about the world. Institute participants explored the history and culture of Brazil, improved their communication skills through Portuguese language classes, and collaborated to design innovative curriculum and materials to use in the classroom. Faculty and staff from three top-tier universities gave lectures and hands-on workshops.

Lesson Plans

This guide explores how to use clips from the film Urbanized in the classroom. This guide explores the Latin American content in the film, and the relevance of the film to social studies and language classrooms with a global component. 

Urbanized in the Classroom

1. Clips in the film are short, discrete, and accessible, which is ideal for classroom use.
2. The film discusses participatory urban design, which directly relates to participatory classrooms and student-centered pedagogy.
3. The study of cities is inherently interdisciplinary (brings together STEM fields, social studies, language, art, etc.).
4. The film touches on concepts that relate to multiple content areas: community, democracy, sustainability, our experience of place/space, and the importance of design and art to everyday life.

Urbanized and Teaching Latin America

1. Useful for engaging student interest in vocabulary units in Spanish related to transit/cities, housing, development, or sustainability.
2. Deals with crucial social, economic, and political issues in Latin American Cities.
3. Helpful for connecting issues faced in Latin American cities to student experiences in their own cities. Fosters global connections and consciousness.
4. Provides a different view of Latin America through:   Focusing on cities; Discussing cutting edge ways Latin America is addressing urban development challenges, (disrupting developed/developing binary models); Showing how cities in the Americas (and the world) are connected
5. The film discusses participatory urban design, which directly relates to participatory classrooms and student-centered pedagogy.
6. The study of cities is inherently interdisciplinary (brings together STEM fields, social studies, language, art, etc.).
7. The film touches on concepts that relate to multiple content areas: community, democracy, sustainability, our experience of place/space, and the importance of design and art to everyday life.

Author(s): Jamie Lee Marks

Grade Levels: 5–8, 9–12

Lesson Plan