This resource manual provides ideas, lesson plans, course outlines, arts and crafts projects, games, and other materials for teaching K-12 students about Latin America. A major objective is to help students understand and appreciate the diverse Latin American culture. There are six chapters in this volume. Chapter one discusses key ideas that can…

There are a variety of methods to impart the cultural setting of a foreign language. The teacher can use, among other things, cultural assimilators, films, mini-dramas, culture capsules, background lectures, and native-speaking class visitors. This last technique can be extremely effective but difficult to arrange and difficult to control once it…

An analysis of concepts of time in Latin American societies focuses on aspects that can be useful in teaching Spanish as a second language and Hispanic culture in anglophone North America, and includes specific suggestions for classroom activities and teaching techniques. Analysis looks at the following aspects and functions of time: polychronic…

This is one of several sequential units developed by the Latin American Curriculum Project. The primary objective was to promote pupil understanding of the social and cultural patterns (ways of living) of Latin America. Appreciation of the diversity in the area is developed by comparing four different families, and contrasting these with life in…

Training of four Puerto Ricans and four non-Puerto Ricans to assess the portrayal of Puerto Ricans in a sample of ethnic literature using a holistic approach is described. Basic assumptions involved in a holistic reading or scoring are as follows: (1) readers judge each textual unit as a whole and also within the context of the range of categories…

In an effort to sensitize college students of Spanish for the professions to the values and social reality of the Hispanic world, one teacher used a combination of demographic information and Hispanic American literature. Information on the geographic distribution and characteristics of Hispanic groups in the United States was provided as a…

As one of the sequential units developed by the Latin American Curriculum Project, it expands further the material in the units covered at the lower grade levels. It is a two week unit which emphasized a comparison of the Anglo- and Latin American colonial systems. Broader perspectives and more meaningful understanding of both civilizations are…