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Create in Google Earth the trip Javier made from his hometown in Herradura, El Salvardor to Guatemala, through Mexico and crossing the border into the U.S.. Students can add a commentary explaining what happened to Javier at the geographical places. Some places to add and see in Google World would be his school, Escuela Parroquial Fray Cosme Spessoto, Tecun,Guatemala, Ocos, Mexico, Pacific Ocean, Oaxaca, Acapulco, Guadalajara, Sonora, Los Mochis, Mazatlan, Cuidad Obregon, Nogales and where he ends up in the U.S. Students can calculate the distance traveled. Students can create their own map of a trip they have taken or their immigration trip.

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© 2018 Copyright When We Were Young There Was A War.

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What concepts or big ideas are in this book?

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What concepts or big ideas are in this book?

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Aw snap! Google Earth isn't supported on your browser. You may need to update your browser or use a different browser. Please see our system requirements for more information. Chrome is a great choice and you can download it here.

Or if you're feeling adventurous, you can try Earth anyway by choosing an option below.

Learn more about Google Earth.

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Aw snap! Google Earth isn't supported on your browser. You may need to update your browser or use a different browser. Please see our system requirements for more information. Chrome is a great choice and you can download it here. Or if you're feeling adventurous, you can try Earth anyway by choosing an option below.

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Solito by Javier Zamora: 9780593498064 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK AS FEATURED ON TODAY • A young poet tells the unforgettable story of his harrowing migration from El Salvador to the United States at...

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To engage and promote discussion about the book ask students to identify the big ideas or concepts this book covers. Next in small groups of 3-4 students may create concept maps that interest them. Directions for implementation of concept mapping. Here is a sample presentation to use/adapt for concept mapping. Use the questions produced to guide students’ wonderings and inquiry through the reading. Post the Concept Maps in the classroom and continue to add to them as students progress through the reading.

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MindMeister: Online Mind Mapping and Brainstorming

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Create, share and collaboratively work on mind maps with MindMeister, the leading online mind mapping software. Includes apps for iPhone, iPad and Android.

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Interested students might want to listen & create a playlist of  3-5 songs Javier mentions in his memoir, what do these songs represent to him. Use these Templates and thank @mrsbyarshistory. Students could create their own favorite music platform to create a playlist of songs they would like to hear on their own journey while connecting their big ideas.

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Students can participate in an inquiry process the Question Formulation Technique to create their own questions about the book after reading assigned chapters, here is a QFT facilitator presentation to develop questions.

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Here is an article on literature circles would be an option for discussions and role taking. Here are some role sheets you can use.

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Here are some tools to use for Socratic seminar discussions about the text.

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Many thanks to this community of educators for their work! Thanks Jaqui Greene for this presentation on how to differentiate choice boards for optimal thinking and rigor. Thanks also to Jessica Ryan for her presentation of choice boards and the Elevator for Engaging Learners presentation. Here is a Tic-Tac Board written in consideration of Sternberg Intelligences for Spanish classes, by Andrea Cordero. Creating Interactive Learning Menus, thanks to Casey Bell for her Novel Study Tic-Tac Toe Boards.  Tic-Tac-Boards  provide  differentiation, choice and voice. Thanks to SlidesMania for this Gems Choice Board Template.

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Playlists can also be used to provide differentiation and students choice. Thanks to the educators at Poly High School in Riverside USD for this blog of examples of playlists. Percents Playlist idea that can be adapted. Playlist template from Caitlin Tucker.

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Having students create questions and interview family members who have immigrated to the United States and writing up their story and sharing if possible would be awesome. If there are enough stories then they could be shared on google sites. This assignment could be included on a choice board too. Writing reflections about their reading is another possibility.

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16 questions to ask after reading 'Solito' by Javier Zamora

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16 questions to ask after reading 'Solito' by Javier Zamora

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16 questions to ask after reading ‘Solito’ by Javier Zamora

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Jenna Bush Hager said her most recent Read With Jenna pick is about “doing the unthinkable.”

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Solito by Javier Zamora - Former College of Marin Student on the New York Times Best Seller List

Photo Credit: Gerardo del Valle

Javier was a student here at College of Marin briefly, and his mother and father took many classes over many years here in the English as a Second Language program. Javier gave back to the students of College of Marin in 2018 when he returned to COM to a packed classroom of students and gave an amazing poetry reading ( See pictures). We are so proud of Javier's achievements and the many accomplishments of his mother and father and entire family. Read Solito, his latest book. COM Library has four copies! Or ... why not buy it!?

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LibGuides: Javier Zamora: Solito by Javier Zamora

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Resources for Teach Central America Week A Project of Teaching for Change

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Resources for Teach Central America Week A Project of Teaching for Change

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Teaching for Change hosted the fourth annual Teach Central America Week from October 3-9, 2022. Educators from 38 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and Costa Rica signed up to participate and organizations across the country endorsed the week.

In support of this important week, a number of publishers donated titles by Central American authors and/or about Central America as gifts for educators who share teaching stories. We extend our appreciation to Groundwood Books, Beacon Press, Copper Canyon Press, Haymarket Books, Verso Books, Hard Ball Press, Arte Público Press, and Shout Mouse Press for their generous support of Teach Central America Week.

Read below for news about lessons, teaching stories, and events from this year's Teach Central America Week.

Sally Stanhope, a social studies teacher at Chamblee High School, used Central America: An Introductory Lesson with her students to help them learn about U.S. involvement in Central America and the activists who fought for democracy and popular sovereignty in their respective countries. Because most of Stanhope's ESOL students are Guatemalan, she focused the lesson on Guatemalan freedom fighters like Rigoberta Menchú Tum, Otto René Castillo, Irma Flaquer Azurdia, and Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán.

Ariana Wohl at The UCAP School introduced all eight of her middle school student sections to the multilingual Pensamiento Serpentinoby Luis Valdez. Wohl learned about the poem during the Indigenous Central America workshop that was part of the October 1 Indigenous Peoples' Day Curriculum Teach-In. Students repeatedly read the poem in a variety of ways - line by line, chorally, separately by language, alternating language, etc. and discussed its meaning and application to their lives. Students also identified the countries (including the United States!) where Mayan peoples live today. Some of the students had previously studied the ancient Maya, but none really knew much about contemporary Mayans today. The poem served as an important opener.

Each morning at Webster Avenue ES, ESL/Bilingual teacher Lindsay Paiva explored the life of a different Central American figure with students by watching videos and looking at pictures. Paiva also read Rainbow Weaver and led a discussion about weaving. Paiva teaches mostly Indigenous Guatemalan students with Mayan roots, and students brought in weaving from home to share with the class. Students also completed the the paper doll activity included in the teacher's guide from Lee & Low.

Roosevelt Senior High School

Roosevelt Senior High School (DCPS) kicked off Teach Central America Week 2022 with an author visit sponsored by An Open Book Foundation and Shout Mouse Press.

A few dozen students from Roosevelt's International Academy, which includes many students who are newcomers to the United States from Central America, met in the library/media center to hear from Santos, one of the contributing authors of Voces Sin Fronteras: Our Stories, Our Truth. She and Alexa Patrick, program director at Shout Mouse Press, engaged in dialogue about the book and what impact it has. Read more.

Connecting Pre-Colonial Indigenous Central American Cultures to the Present

Fifth grade Renaissance history teacher Liora Valeroconnected students' study of Renaissance-era Central American culture to the present-day realities of Central American countries. Students learned about the Gods & Goddesses of the Nahua, Aztec, and Maya, and then made Hojalatas based on symbols and imagery from different cultures in the area.

By completing the Geography is History activity, students were able to compare and contrast pre-colonized and current cultures and think about how the Indigenous cultures were impacted by colonization and later globalization. Read more.

High School at the LAB SCHOOL

Tejiéndonos en Náhuat EVENT

Casa de la Cultura El Salvadorand Teaching for Change hosted this Spanish language event about the revitalization of the Náhuat language in El Salvador via Facebook Live.

Hannah Halpern and Megan Burleigh welcomed Teaching Central America advisor Jeannette Noltenius and her colleague Flori Berrocal to their classes at Hearst ES (DCPS).

First, Noltenius introduced herself and a bit about the work she does with the organization she founded and serves as president of, Casa de la Cultura El Salvador.

Noltenius then gifted the classes a set of Mario Bencastro's A Train Called Hope/Un Tren Llamado Esperanza and led the third graders through a reading of the book. Noltenius' aim was to help the students unpack why people migrate the way they do - often on a long and dangerous journey on a train nicknamed La Bestia (the beast). Read more.

Students Teach About Central America at Cardozo EC

For her teaching about Central America this year, high school language arts teacher Beth Barkley encouraged her students - most of whom are newly arrived students from outside the United States - to teach other students about the countries from which they migrated. Barkley's students drew from personal experiences and deep research about Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama, as well as other countries of the Latin American diaspora. While the idea of teaching about Central America is to bring attention to a region that is often neglected in teaching about Latinx heritage, Barkley and her students wanted to more comprehensively recognize and instill pride in the array of cultures present in their classes. However, the center of their research and class presentations remained teaching about Central America. One objective, for example, read, "Our objective is to learn about how countries in Central America are related." Read more.

Teach Central America Expo at Bruce-Monroe @ Park View

For the last three years, dual language teacher Cesarina Pierre has helped coordinate a Teach Central America Expo at Bruce-Monroe ES @ Park View (DCPS). This year's expo remained an intentional, collaborative, and joyous expression of the importance of teaching about Central America! Pierre teaches about Central America before, during, and beyond the annual Teach Central America Week, and has even facilitated workshops for D.C. area educators on how to establish and grow their practice of teaching about Central America.

At Bruce-Monroe, the whole school engages in long term, multidisciplinary study of the region's culture and history. Many of the lower elementary grades, for example, read Linda Elovitz Marshall's Rainbow Weaver, study traditional clothes making, and have even created tutorials about how to weave. Read more.

Learning About Guatemala at Roosevelt HS

This week some scholars in our Global Service & Diplomacy Academy joined with Ms. Dema's International Academy English class to hear from Ms. Maria Lucia Berrospi of @IFPRI who shared information about coffee farming in Guatemala. #TeachCentralAmerica pic.twitter.com/zKIajOBB2R
- Roosevelt Global Service and Diplomacy Academy (@RooseveltGSDA) October 8, 2022

Elizabeth Self, a Kindergarten teacher at East Boston Early Education Center, taught a lesson on community using the book Rainbow Weaver. The class had been reading books about Latina community in particular as a part of Hispanic Heritage month. Self introduced the book by briefly explaining that this book took place in a country where the economy and even environment and way of life had been altered by foreign intervention. While reading the book, Self stopped to discuss and had students turn and talk about perseverance and how the protagonist wanted to help her community. Finally, students had a conversation connecting the text to Hispanic communities and actions Kindergarten students can take to help their communities.

Sarah Ballister, an ELA teacher at Dodson Middle School (LAUSD), learned about and decided to participate in Teach Central America Week when signing up to attend the Indigenous Peoples' Day Teach-In sponsored by Teaching for Change and the National Museum of the American Indian. The teach-in featured a workshop on Indigenous Central America. Said Ballister,

Earlier in my career I would have let days like these pass me by, because I was concerned about doing it "right" or perfectly. But if I wait until I can do something perfectly, I might be waiting a long time, and so will my students.

Ballister used materials shared by Teaching for Change to label a map of Central America using geographical and historical clues, then did an interactive read-aloud of an excerpt from Javier Zamora's memoir, . Students responded to the text using "I notice. . . " "I wonder. . ." and "I want to say that. . ." One student wrote,

I want to say that I experienced this before, this story is a mirror for me.

Nancy Rodriguez, a social studies teacher at Mission High School, began Teach Central America week with a short lesson on the geography of Central America. Then students listened to and read Yesika Salgado's poem, " Brown Girl." Students ended the week by choosing a Central American figure, researching the person, and sharing what they learned with the class. Some figures included Tecum Umán, Berta Caceres, Monseñor Romero, Prudencia Ayala, Rigoberta Menchu, Teofimo Andrés López, Brisa Margarita Terezon, and Maribel Guardia. Rodriguez shared why it is important to her to teach about Central America:

I teach about Central America because as a daughter of Salvadoran immigrants my own experience with Central American curriculum in elementary and high school was very limited. I finally had an amazing teacher in high school who began to teach me about El Salvador and the solidarity movement in the 1980s. I felt seen and my family's history was finally being validated. I now teach at a high school not too far from where I went to high school. The population is about 60% Latinx and most of the students in our Newcomer Program are from Central America. I still believe that it is important to teach all of our students about their own histories and that of their classmates as a form of empowerment & empathy and to create a better understanding of our diverse communities here in the United States.

Abra Koch, language teacher at Loveland High School, taught a lesson about Oscar Romero. Students first discussed the economic, political and social circumstances of the majority of the population of El Salvador in the 1980's. Then students watched the film Romero and discussed, orally and in written responses, the role of the church in a community and the impact of the idea of Liberation Theology. Students created an infographic of El Salvador around the time of the assassination of Archbishop Romero. Then students used the " When we Were Young There Was a War" website to learn about the aftermath of the civil war in El Salvador. Students presented about their findings after completing their research. Students also read the poem " Like You / Como Tú " by Roque Dalton.

Kristoffer Bonilla played the film Harvest of Empire for his high school students in New Orleans, Louisiana to introduce the root causes of the immigration crisis.

Amanda Flayer used Margarito's Forest as a title for reading circles with 4th-6th grade students in Coarsegold, California. Students read the book with a reading mentor and discussed themes of community movements, environmental values and cultural preservation.

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2022 Teach Central America Week - Teaching Central America

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Teaching for Change hosted the fourth annual Teach Central America Week from October 3-9, 2022. Educators from 38 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and Costa Rica signed up to participate and organizations across the country endorsed the week.