Overview
Rational
Objectives
Strategies
Classroom Activities
Bibliography
Appendices
Standards

"Escape to Latin America" is the title that I selected for my curriculum unit that I developed for the seminar "Contemporary Latin America: Culture and Civilization". This seminar was offered through the Pittsburgh Teachers Institute. I chose the title because I wanted my students to look at the project as if it were an adventure. The goal of the unit will be for the students to develop an extensive project on Latin America. I was hoping to create a teaching unit centered on a student driven project. Even though there will be guidelines and assignments that will come from me, the students will be accountable for developing the course of their projects. According to the sixth grade course outline for the Pittsburgh Public Schools, Latin America is taught in the second half of the year. Since this project will be taught later in the year, the students will already have worked with the five themes of geography in other geographic areas of the Western Hemisphere. The students also have had experience working in cooperative groups. They were required to complete a project on the provinces of Canada in collaborative groups. Building on their prior knowledge and experience the students will be able to increase their efforts to make this project one they will take enormous pride in doing. Hopefully, not only will they master many skills; they will enjoy the experience. The chapter on Mexico is to be taught prior to the rest of Latin America and the West Indies. I will teach the chapter on Mexico and use this opportunity to model how the students should approach their projects. They will be able to observe through my use of different teaching techniques what they want in their projects.

It will be entirely up to the group to use the different materials and methods when developing their projects so that it will be interesting when presented. I believe that if the students are responsible for the research and presenting the information to the class, the experience will be a more meaningful and gratifying one. Since students are principally taking the role as teachers when presenting their projects they will need to be knowledgeable about many aspects concerning their chosen country. If they have to know the information thoroughly enough to teach it they will understand and retain the information better.

In developing my unit "Escape to Latin America" I utilized the information that I received through the "Contemporary Latin America: Culture and Civilization" seminars and readings, along with the new sixth grade curriculum that the Pittsburgh Public Schools adopted this past year. I expect to be able to integrate all of the resources so that the unit will meet the curriculum requirements that are already in place in the school district.

There will be a wide range of learning experience thought the project. Since my sixth grade Social Studies classes are inclusive, there are not only many different learning styles, but also a varied range of learning abilities. The activities will enable each student to contribute to the group. Through group work, research, oral presentations, and self-evaluations the students will easily meet many of the Social Studies standards that we are accountable for in the Pittsburgh Public Schools. The unit "Escape to Latin America" is written to be used in my sixth grade Social Studies classes but the students will definitely be refining skills from different disciplines. While the students work towards meeting the objectives of this Social Studies curriculum unit, they will easily meet the standards for many of their classes.

The first objective of researching and presenting information on a country in Latin America will meet many of the communication standards. For example, Communication Content Standard one states that the students will use effective research and information management skills, including locating primary and secondary sources of information with traditional and emerging library technologies. While doing the research the students will visit not only the school library but also the local public library to use the different resources there. There will also be class time allotted to work in the school’s computer lab. Each student will have access to the Internet and the encyclopedia in the computer lab. The students will be able to meet the communication content standard three where the students will respond orally and in writing to information and ideas gained by reading narrative and informational texts and use the information and ideas to make decisions and solve problems. Since the communication teacher on my team and I are both taking the seminar together, we will be able to collaborate on our units. This will make it possible for the students to see the connection between communication and social studies.

The second objective will state that the students will be able to represent the information that they researched to create graphs and charts. This math skill will enable the students to illustrate their work for their group presentation. The students will not only have to be able to take information and represent it on charts and graphs but they will need to be able to use the information from charts and graphs that they will come across during their research. When they get information from these places they will be satisfying the Mathematics Content Standard six which states that students will evaluate, infer, and draw appropriate conclusions from charts, tables, and graphs showing the relationships between data and real world situations. The students will also need to take several of the statistics on their country and chart them on graphs to make it easier for the students who will be listening to the presentation to understand.

The Citizenship Standards for the Pittsburgh Board of Education are broken down into grade appropriate expectations. This makes it effortless for the students to see that they will be meeting each and everyone of the Citizenship Standards. The students will not only meet the standards through working and presenting their projects but also by listening to and scoring the other groups presentations. After the students finish their projects they will be able to demonstrate an understanding of major events, cultures, groups, and individuals in the historical development of Latin America. They will also demonstrate an understanding of the themes and patterns of geography, know the location of major bodies of water, landmasses and nations, and describe the relationship between geography and historical, economic, and cultural development in Latin America. One way to assess if they have met this standard is that they will need to have visuals of the themes of geography and the maps will have to be detailed. The next standard will be met when they research the economic and government systems. In their presentations and written report they will need to explain how trade connects their country to the other countries of the world. Also while meeting Citizenship standard three: All students describe the development and operations of economic and governmental systems within Latin America and assess their relationships to those systems. The students will be able to better understand how often politics of a country has a great impact on its economics. With all of the groups resources pulled together each student will be required to write a paper. When they complete this project they will not only complete standards in communication but also fulfill Citizenship standard five: all students develop and defend a position on current issues confronting citizens of Latin America by conducting research, analyzing alternatives, organizing evidence and arguments, and making oral presentations.

The next objective is the one I feel is the most important because this will be the lessons that the students use during their lives. The students will refine their skills of working with others all through this project. The objective will be that the students will develop and respect the rules to enable them to work successfully in a cooperative group. Since the students will be working in cooperative groups, they will meet many of the remaining Citizenship Standards. The Citizenship Standard eight states that all students demonstrate the ability to work effectively with others seems easy enough to be met but many of the sixth graders are still learning how to work with others. They often find it extremely frustrating for many different reasons from not having patience with a teammate or thinking something someone else proposes is stupid and saying so. I will have lessons on communication in a healthy way. Hopefully through the lessons and idea of supporting their teammates the students will be able to meet Citizenship standard seven all students demonstrate their skills of communicating, negotiating and cooperating with others.

There are many different ways to go about implementing this curriculum unit. It is supposed to be written so that a teacher can adapt it to his/her classroom needs. All of the information on classroom management and other things are just suggestions that seemed helpful to me. From the beginning of the year my students are required to keep a notebook for Social Studies. The notebook is kept in a folder in the classroom. I have different color folders for each class. This makes it easier for the students who are in charge of passing the things out for the class. They can use their same notebook for this project because the project was written to compliment the sixth grade Social Studies Curriculum, not replace it. After the house keeping is cleared away, I will begin the Unit on Mexico, which will serve as a model. Because all of my classes are full inclusion classes, when assigning students to their cooperative groups I try to vary the students by ability. The students will be responsible throughout the project to keep them on task. The students will be held accountable for the individual work that they are required to contribute to the group.

Since one of the objectives will be for the students to make up their own rules for working in the groups, it is important to first teach a few lessons on how to work well together. Even though resolving conflict does not seem as though it would apply to a group project, it most certainly does. For example, once on the day of the presentation on a project on Canada a student become extremely agitated with another teammate and ended up tearing up the entire project. The other student knew the information well enough that he presented it without note cards or anything. This is when I realized that we needed to spend time addressing conflict resolution before attempting any group work. With this in mind the students will be able to have the tools to achieve citizenship standard eleven: all students demonstrate the ability to resolve conflicts in peaceful ways, including, but not limited to, peer mediation, anger management, interpersonal skills, and problem solving. A few lessons on how to work with a group would be valuable and save everyone a lot of headaches.

The first part of the unit would be that a few lessons would be taught on working with others and how to handle situations in that group. One of the lessons that will help the students to meet this objective would be about teams. The students seem to enjoy a lesson on teamwork. For a warm up the students will list things that make up a good team. It could be for any sport or activity the student is familiar with. After they do their warm up the students will contribute to a class list on the blackboard. When the list is completed the students vote on what are the top five most important characteristics to make teamwork together effective. The students will then make a poster with these traits in big bold letters. The poster will be displayed for a reminder of how they should behave when working in-groups.

Classroom discipline is another reason to assign students to groups. For example it would be wise to separate the most disruptive students into different groups. But there are many interesting ways to get the students into groups. For example, pass out different month to five different students' face down then give a name of a holiday that would be found in those months to the remaining students. Explain to the students to find the month that their holiday is in. Then there would be where the five groups come from. Another way to assign groups is to give half of the class a country and the other half the capitals and then let them find each other. The pairs would then find the continent that they are located on. There will only be five continents for this example because I only need five groups, therefore, all of the countries need to be from the five continents. Even if I assign the groups myself for this project I can make this activity work. Before I would have the students physically move into their groups, I would go over step by step how they are to move from their seats to the group areas. For example: do not drag chairs, do not touch each other on the way to the group area and so on. Also, they should be able to get to their groups and be ready to work within ten seconds. I would count out loud up to ten to ensure that they get there. I also count out loud so that they are quiet enough to hear me counting when they are moving.

The second step to prepare the students for their project is to model how they may go about working on the project. This year I will model the project by doing my own project and presentation on Mexico. In the years that follow I will be able to use examples of good work from the student projects. I will always teach the chapter on Mexico because most students would feel it would be unfair to let any of the group's work on Mexico because it would be easier to research and the students seem more familiar with Mexico.

The chapter on Mexico is a very interesting chapter to introduce because many of the students already have an image of Mexico. The main objective when teaching Mexico is to have the students understand the culture and impact that Mexico has not only in their country but also in the United States. This will help the students to discover that their idea of Mexico may not really be how it is. The anticipatory set for the first day, I put on a sombrero and play pieces of Mexican music to get the student's attention. I ask the students why they think I have a hat on in class. Some said I was crazy but most caught on. As a warm up they need to write down things they do with their neighbors and what makes a good neighbor and what makes a bad neighbor. For example, respecting each other. After we make a list on the board with the answers they have from their warm ups, students come to the front of the room and locate Mexico on the large world map. We discuss the border and how this makes Mexico and the United States neighbors. From the list on the board I state that many neighbors borrow or trade. When we studied Canada what was one term that we discussed that had to do with trade? Most of the students will remember NAFTA. We will review what NAFTA stands for. This will lead into the discussion why it is useful to the countries to have a healthy relationship.

To address the misconceptions the students may have about Mexico, the warm up for the next lesson would be for the students to list everything they know about Mexico in their notebooks. While going over the list the students will point out anything they need clarified. This lesson will take place in the school computer lab. The students will complete a worksheet by using the Internet. One site they seemed to enjoy and the reading was understandable to them was "Discovering Mexico @ nationalgeographic.com". The section titled Tour Guide is the section the students viewed. The students will use this section to view pictures of Mexico and read descriptions. For example, there was a picture of Mexico City that shows how the city goes on forever. Also in that same picture it illustrates the thick smog hanging over the city. One of the questions the worksheet would be able to describe would be what is the cause of the smog. There is one picture of a family dressed as clowns, the students might think this funny until they read that the family does this because they are so poor it is the only way they can get money. When the worksheets are corrected they could be used as a class work grade.

The beginning of lesson three will be a quick review of the five themes of geography. The first theme of Location will be reviewed with regards to Mexico. The students will receive a blank map of Mexico when they enter the room. For the warm up the students will be expected to locate some key places in Mexico then label them on their blank desk map. For this lesson the students will be called to the front of the room to locate the key places on the large wall map. The students will also be asked to find Mexico on the large world map. The students should be able to give the latitude and longitude of the key places that they had found. Extra credit homework could be to look around their home and see if there are any products made in Mexico.

After all of the key places both political and physical are located on the students individual desk maps, the next lesson would have them shade the climate areas. First a review of making their own map keys to represent the climates would be discussed. The map keys would be drawn on the back of their maps because there will be more map keys that they will need to draw later in the unit. For the warm up the students will describe the climate of Pittsburgh. There would be a class discussion on the causes of Pittsburgh's climate. The students would then work together in their cooperative groups to come up with reasons they believe what contributes to the climate in Mexico. During their group time they will also have time to share things that they had brought in for the extra credit homework. Each group would make a short presentation to the class on what they came up with. They would be able to use their physical maps with the landforms on it to help explain their findings. To bring the lesson together there would be a class consensus on the three top reasons for the climate of Mexico. If the students were way off base I would ask them leading questions to help them.

The next lesson would have the students discover what types of vegetation and animals live in Mexico. I would have ten pictures of different animals taped to the front board. For their warm up the students using the information they already have about Mexico, would pick the five animals that they believe could live in Mexico. After they list the five animals in their notebooks, they would write a sentence explaining why each of the other animals could not live in Mexico. For example, why a polar bear would not be found in Mexico. The students will then be shown different plants that grow in Mexico. When showing the picture of a cactus I will ask the students why the cactus can live in a desert. If they do not know why, I will give it as an extra credit assignment for them to research.

The next part of this lesson will cover the natural resources of Mexico. The objective would be for the students to identify the natural resources of Mexico. The students will use a resource map of Mexico and find then label the resources on their individual desk maps. Before they label the resources students should make a map key on the back of their maps titled Natural Resources. The students should not just copy the symbols that are on the map in the book; they should make up their own symbols to represent the natural resources. For example, instead of only an S for silver they may draw a symbol that reminds them of silver.

The fifth lesson will continue the discussion of Mexico's natural resources. The objective will be for the students to be able to infer the connection between the natural resources of Mexico and its relationship with the United States. The warm up would be for the students to define subsistence farming and commercial farming. Before going over the warm up, the students would be told that these terms are very important to remember because they will come up again and again throughout their study of many different countries, for example, next year when they study some of the countries in Africa. When the class goes over these definitions I will ask them what does a T.V. commercial do? When a student answers to try to sell you something, I will write it on the board and explain to my students that is how they can remember commercial farming because the crops are grown to be sold. I will go on to explain that the United States imports many fruits and vegetables from Mexico and ask the students what are some reasons why people in Pittsburgh would need to buy imported fruits and vegetables. The students need to compare our climate to Mexico's. If the students are struggling with any of the answers, I will ask leading questions and have them take the time to figure out the connections. After a student can explain the reason people in Pittsburgh would import fruits and vegetables, I will ask the student to stand and explain his/her interpretation. Having the students stand allows them to get use to speaking in front of the class. Also when a student stands to answer the other students listen better. Many times I will have the student come to the front of the room where they can take my place.

The topic of trade will be revisited in this lesson. There will be a class discussion on what would happen if our country never traded with other countries. The students will look at what would happen if the United States stopped trading with countries that might depend on the U.S. for goods or services. During this lesson the students will define and discuss important terms. Some of the key terms would be Maquiladoras, land reform and migrant workers. The students will read a story about a young boy whose family are migrant workers. After the story, the students will be given a homework assignment that will have them write a short essay reflecting on the life of a migrant worker.

The next lesson will start out with students reading their homework assignments to the class. There would be a class discussion on the working conditions of many of the workers in Mexico. Explaining that it is not only farm workers that find themselves working in abusive conditions but also many factories have terrible working conditions. The objective of this lesson would be to have the students use the statistics on migration to explain how much cities have increased in size. There will be a list of statistics on the board. The students will break into their groups to design graphs illustrating the statistics. Before the students begin, they will be given a checklist on what the graphs will be expected to entail. For example neatness and accuracy might be on the checklist. Also they will be evaluated on how well their group works together. The students will use markers and poster board to represent the information that their group is responsible for. Each group will be given a different topic. For example, one group may be responsible to illustrate by a bar graph how many people lived in rural and urban areas of Mexico before 1920 compared to 1950 and 1999.

While the students are making their charts, they could be observed and given a grade on group work. The rules should still be displayed on the walls. They should receive a good grade if they are following the rules of the group and the classroom rules. Different things could get points subtracted from the group’s perfect score. For example, arguing and insults would be minus ten points, whereas walking around and being too loud would minus five points. The students are told immediately if their group is in jeopardy of losing points because this allows for the students to control their own behavior by getting themselves back on track. The students will present their posters to the class and explain the information on it. The groups work would be posted on the walls with the checklist. After all the groups present their work the students will be asked to draw conclusions using the information on the graphs and explain why they think these changes took place.

During the next lesson the students will watch a movie titled "Suemi's Story". This is a story about a young Mayan girl who lives with her family on the Yucatan Peninsula. The movie will demonstrate many topics being covered in this chapter. First, since Suemi is the same age as the students in the class, the students will be able to relate to her. The movie is filmed on the Yucatan peninsula and will illustrate the climate and vegetation of the region nicely. Before the students watch the movie I will go over the areas of the movie where some of the students would take the opportunity to laugh and fool around. I will address things that are different and explain that because something is different than what we are use to it does not make it stupid or funny. For example there are times in the movie that Suemi does not wear shoes and at work her father is not wearing a shirt. After I remind the students that it is very hot where the people in the movie live and that is why people in the movie may not wear all of the clothing appeal we are used to. Before the movie the students should realize that the voice they hear is not Suemi's. Then ask them to tell you why Suemi does not do the talking in the movie. The students will understand that a translator is needed because they would not understand her if she would speak because she speaks Spanish. The assignment for the movie would be for the students to list ten things that they have in common with Suemi. During the movie I will pause at important parts to point out things I would like the students to focus on.

After the movie the students will be given an essay to write for homework. The essay will be titled "Suemi is Coming To My House". In the assignment they must write a story describing what they would need to do if Suemi was coming to stay with them for a week. They must start the story by writing a letter to her telling her what she would need to pack. They would get extra points if they use the Spanish words they learned in language class in their letter. The students should include some of the similarities that they have with Suemi that they noted from the movie in their story.

The students will volunteer to read their stories to class. The students will then reflect on the question "How would your friends treat Suemi?" It would be here that the discussion would center on how sometimes people are treated different because of how they look or how they speak. Through their discussions hopefully the students will see that it is not important to try to change someone to "fit in" but to learn about and appreciate their differences. Before the students go on to other topics on Mexico, this might be a good place to review the information already covered. An easy assessment is having the students to define key terms and key places. They would be able to take a quick quiz as a warm up in the next class period. The students will take their notebooks home to study.

At the beginning of the next lesson the students will be given a quiz. As the students enter the classroom they will be given a blank map. There would be a word bank on the front board of the key places. The students will be given time to label the blank maps. The second part of the quiz would be a matching of key words and definitions. After the quiz is collected, the students will be able to see how they did right away because I will go over the answers while using the map. Then to join it to the next lesson I would explain that everything that they have learned about Mexico ties into its history. In this lesson the students will get an overview of Mexico's history. Through this lesson the students will be able to understand that the history of Mexico explains the cultures of the people who live there today. The class will read a story describing the conquest of Mexico. Before reading the story a student will locate Spain on the map and trace the route a ship would take to get Mexico. After the story is read, the students will be shown a series of cartoons depicting the conquest of Mexico. I would first explain to the students that not all cartoons are drawn for fun and describe political cartoons and show them some examples. The cartoons show different things that occurred in Mexico's history. For example one cartoon depicts, Cortes and the Aztecs. The cartoon strip that they will be working on does not have words with them. The assignment would be for the students to write in their own words what they think the people in the cartoon would be saying. They may use the story we read as reference. Since there are different times in history represented the students could cut out and paste the cartoons making a timeline of the history of Mexico.

The Disney movie "The Road to Eldorado" may be viewed, but only after explaining this is a movie that takes a part of Mexico's history and makes it into a sort of fairy tale. The factual aspects of the movie would be pointed out to the students. First, the movie shows that there was an advanced civilization in the region of Mexico before the Spanish arrived. Second, one of the driving forces behind the conquest and colonization was gold. Also there was a part in the movie where they are playing a sport that resembles modern day basketball and the students can relate to that. There are things that can be learned by observing a movie even though it was not written as an educational piece.

The warm up for this lesson would have the students define key word such as indigenous and mestizo. Words that are not common to them should have a star next to the term and definition in their notebooks. Looking at the timelines that they had constructed, the students will draw conclusions on the influences of the culture of Mexico. The students will be shown a pie graph of the ethnic make up of the people of Mexico.

Before we finish the unit on Mexico it would be nice to have a fiesta. The students could plan it. We could have music, food and make handicrafts. The very last part of the unit on Mexico will be the review and the chapter test. The test would include multiple choice, short answer and essay. The students' homework would be to take their notebooks home and study. After the students take the test and it is scored the students would be required to take the test home and have it signed by their parents. Usually I have the students either get their study sheet or test signed because this way the parents are kept up to date.

The first lesson that will lead into the student projects will seem like a review on Mexico but what students will really be doing is listing ways to present their projects. For example, "What is the capital of Mexico?, do you remember the day that you learned that? What were we doing in class?" The answer "using maps" would be written on the board. Then another thing the students would be asked to identify is the theme of geography being explored by using maps. The answer would be Location. Another example would be to ask the students "What did Suemi do for fun?" "How did you learn about Suemi?". A movie would be placed on the board. These questions will get them thinking about different ways to get the information across in their presentations. After the students get a few ideas on different methods to present the project, we will begin the project.

The project will be a cooperative group project that is driven by the students. The students will be given a limited choice of which country in Latin America that they can research. In each class there will have to be at least one country from Central America, one from South America and one from the West Indies. Also it is important to assign the countries that have enough information available to make in possible for the students to do a ten-minute presentation on it. The students should write down the name of their country on the back of their notebooks, for easy reference. Also they need to make sure the spelling is correct. The students will stay in the same groups that they have been working in unless there is a need to change for classroom management.

The second lesson would begin with the students making a list of things that they would like to learn about their country. The class assignment would be for the students to meet with their groups to decide what topics to research for their country. The students will be reminded to use the Five Themes of Geography as a guideline to create the topics. Each student will be given a checklist of the assignments and when they are due. For example, when the note cards are due. The students must divide the research work among the group. Having the students being responsible for work distribution will put peer pressure on them to do the work. I think that if students know that other students are counting on them they will do the research. Each student is responsible for part of the research. Since many of the students do not have computers at home this will require them to go to the school or public library. There will be one or two field trips to the public library as a group. This is possible because the public library is a block from the school. Also there will be class time allotted to work in the computer lab at school. The outside research will be counted as a homework grade. If a student comes across information that they can not use but another group could use they can bring it in for extra credit points and then give it to the other group. The students will be expected to have the information of the resources that they used for a bibliography that they would later be required to have for their individual papers. At the end of their group’s presentations the students will need to hand in a bibliography along with their note cards.

After the students bring in the information that they researched they will meet with their groups. During this lesson the groups will discuss the dynamics of the group, the objectives that they will meet, and the development of a rubric for the final project. The group will need to give me the list of the students in the group with each of their roles within the group. For example it is important for me to know the materials person since that will be the only student allowed to walk around the room during class. Also the classroom rule that only one person speaks at a time should be followed in the groups so that they listen to each other’s ideas. The group leaders will meet with me to go over the importance of getting everyone involved from their groups. We will brainstorm on ideas to get all the students involved. Their objectives for their projects must be written down and a copy should be given to me. The ten questions that they will ask the rest of the class after their presentation will to check for understanding, should be given to me. I will put these questions on an overhead transparency for each group so that they can have the class copy them as a warm up before the presentation. This way the students listening to the presentation will know what they should be listening for and it will give the group presenting time to set up.

The next lesson will be on how to create a rubric. Before the students can make one they need to understand what it is and why it good to have one before you start your project. The warm up would be for the students to copy the definition of a rubric into their notebooks. A rubric is a set of scoring guidelines for judging work on performance based tasks. Since this is a student driven project it will be important for the students to create their own rubrics so that they can use the rubric throughout the project to judge and revise their work. The students will know from the beginning what is expected from them and they will know distinctly when they have and have not met the expectations and standards. To practice writing a rubric, we will create one together for a song. The blank chart for the rubric will be on the board; we will fill it in together. We would illustrate what a song would need to be considered at level four. We will work on this chart until all of the levels are completed. On the other board would be one example of something that would be considered level four for their projects. The groups would then meet to complete the rubric for the project. After the groups have completed their assignments they will present the rubrics to they class. There would be a class vote on which expectations should be included in the class rubric. One student would be asked by the class to draw the rubric on large poster board that could be displayed in the class. Every time that the students work on their projects, they should make sure they are working towards meeting criteria in their rubric. Requiring the students to have an objective and rubric from the beginning of the project will help to keep them focused.

The warm up for the next lesson would be for the students to write down what they are good at and how they can use their talents to contribute to the group. For example, if they are good at drawing they might be able to do the visuals for the presentation. The students will be able to use what ever they would like to do their presentation. If they need me to get anything for them like the VCR or disc player they need to put their request in writing and put the group number and class on the paper. The groups will be given the date of their presentation a head of time so that they can invite their parents.

After the students are done with the group project each student will be required to write an individual report paper covering the topics that they researched for their country. The individual report will need to include a cover page, rough draft that was peer checked, the report and bibliography.

On the day of the presentations the students not giving their presentations will have two assignment to complete. First, they will copy the ten questions from the overhead. The questions will be answered at the end of the presentation. Second, they will evaluate the presentation using the student made rubric. Before the presentations begin I make the students aware that they will be rated on their listening and behavior during the presentation. I will remind them that they will soon also be in front of the room and to be respectful of the presenters. While the groups set up for their presentation I will remind the rest of the class to keep in mind that the camera picks up everything not just the person speaking at the time. The taping of the presentations will probably take at least two days.

After the students are done with their presentations they will ask the class to answer the questions that they had on the overhead. I will collect the questions and answers at the end of the class. I will use them as part of the listening grade for each student. After all of the groups have presented their projects they will view the tapes. During the viewing of the tapes the students will evaluate themselves. I will grade each presentation and the other students will write three things that they liked about each presentation. The homework assignment would be for the students to write a paragraph on what they would do differently if they were presenting all over again tomorrow. If there are any projects from other classes that are exceptional and meet all of the expectations, I will show them to the other classes. Also if it were possible it would be wonderful to have guest speakers from different Latin American Countries.

The final assessment on the curriculum unit would be a test made up of the students’ questions from their projects. One other thing that I would ask the students to do is to fill out a survey on how they liked the project. Also I would ask for any input that they have on how I could improve the "Escape to Latin America" curriculum unit. Any ideas that the students have on how I could make the unit a more meaningful learning experience would help me when I go to revise my curriculum unit for the next year.

Books

Alvarez, Julia, How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. New York: First Plume Printing, 1992. A story about the changes four sister went through after they moved to the United States.

Fuentes, Carlos, The Vintage Book of Latin American Stories. New York: Vintage Books, 2000. A collection of short stories from Latin America.

Marquez, Gabriel, Innocent Erendira and Other Stories. New York: Harper and Row, 1978. A story of a young girl and her grandmother.

Barnet, Miguel, Biography of a Runaway Slave. A story about a mans life after he is free.

Winn, Peter, Americas: The Changing Face of Latin America and The Caribbean. A very good book to use as reference on the history of Latin America.

Magazines

Bowden, Tracy, National Geographic. July 1996, "Treasure From The Silver Bank".

Conniff, Richard, National Geographic. February 1996, "Tex-Mex Border".

Edwards, Mike, National Geographic. September 1995, "El Salvador".

Mexico, A National Geograhphic Special Edition, National Geographic. August 1996.

Patterson, Wendy, Junior Scholastic. December 2000, "Mexico’s Peaceful Revolution".

Reinhard, John, National Geographic. July 1998, "Research Update: New Inca Mummies".

Stuart, George E., National Geographic. December 1997, "The Royal Crypts of Copan".

Stuart, George E., National Geographic. December 1995, "The Timeless Vision of Teotihuacan".

Wilmore, Kathy, Junior Scholastic. March 1992, "Farewell to Eden: The Yanomamo Struggle to Survive".

Newspaper

"Experts call Ancient City in Peru the oldest in Americas". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. 27 April,2001, page A-1.

"Mexican Volcano Explodes". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. 30 April, 2001, A-2

"Illegals’ may exceed estimate" Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. 19 March, 2001.

"Portraits of the Nation: The Land and the People Series. Argentina: Bolivia, 1992.

"A Survey of world Cultures: Latin America. Culver City, Ca.: Media Materials, 1991.

"The Rainforest". Charleston: Cambridge Research Group, Ltd, 1991.

"Irizarry, Carmen, "Passport to Mexico". New York: Franklin Watts, 1994.

"Caribbean Islands": Ivn 549rvt

"Panama Canal: History Channel, AAE-12203

"Sueimi’s Story: My Modern Mayan Home", United Learning cat. 2047.