Craft Lesson #3: Red Hot Salsa

Materials: Red Hot Salsa: Bilingual poems on being young and Latino in the United States edited by Lori Marie Carlson, pen and paper, magazines, newspapers, collage materials (glue, scissors), poster board (cut in the shape of the U.S.)

Discussion:

Students will identify and list common themes of the Latino experience (particularly that of young adults in the United States). They will read about issues of identity from selected poems from Red Hot Salsa. Then students will learn poetry reading strategies and express what they learned by creating a class collage.

How to Teach It:
First students will be asked to write the definition of what it means to be an American. They will share these definitions with their neighbors. A class discussion will begin with questions such as:

• Are you American by virtue of where you live?
• What kinds of things do you have to do to be an American?
• When someone says the word “America” what comes to mind?

Next, the teacher will review the process for reading a poem, read aloud I Am Who I Am, So What by Raquel Valle Sentíes (Red Hot Salsa, p. 16), and then initiate a discussion prompted by these questions: Who is the speaker of the poem? What do we know about the speaker? What kind of person do they sound like? How do you know? What is the subject of the poem? What is the setting of the poem? What is the tone of the poem? (Meaning what is the narrator’s attitude about the subject? You’ll need to look at the kinds of words, phrases, images, details, etc. the poet chose to describe the subject of the poem. Do the words have positive or negative connotations?)

Next students will be asked to independently read a few poems from the anthology and pay attention to lines or phrases that directly related to the Latino experience. Using these notes, they will cut out words, phrases, and images from the magazines provided to create a class mural/collage that depicts what they have learned about the Latino experience in the United States. Students will provide a written statement that explains what they are attempting to show, supporting their response with lines from the poems studied.

Each member of the class will add their pieces to the collage to form the shape of the United States. As a class, each student will be asked to explain their contribution (or read their written statement). The lesson will end by reviewing these open-ended questions: What is the experience of being a Latino living in the United States today? Are their concerns and experiences different or similar to that of other ethnic groups? Can the experience be categorized at all? What is the role of poetry in expressing and understanding identity?

Bibliographic Information of Resource Text:
http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/lessons/poetry/orgb.html