It all started with a piece of cardboard.
A while back, a co-worker of mine mentioned the cartonera movement as a way of engaging learners in my Spanish Language Arts classroom. Always thinking it sounded like something I wanted to do as part of my instruction, I tucked it away until the right opportunity presented itself. This past summer, while participating in a district-level realignment of our Spanish and English language arts curriculum to the Common Core State Standards, I discovered that the cartonera would be the perfect vehicle for integrating Spanish and English language arts with social studies and art to build bilingual language proficiency and family engagement for students in our school
The title of this unit, Cartoneras: cuentos sobre la comida y la cultura (Cartoneras: Stories About Food and Culture), indicates what we studied for the first quarter. Sixth grade students began the year learning about diversity and creating their own classroom community. They were also studying narrative writing. The cartonera project is exactly that on a larger scale. Cartoneras are beautiful books made from recycled cardboard and distributed by publishing co-ops that began in Latin America and have spread to many places in the world. The purpose of cartoneras is to build community, create art, and continue to publish literature at an affordable price for the public. Throughout the quarter, students would read and write various stories about culture, celebrations, and food. Their finished product was to make their own cartonera to be displayed in our school.
To design this unit, the 6th grade English Language Arts teacher and I, the 6th grade Spanish Language Arts teacher, collaborated to discuss the goal of the unit. Because SLA and ELA have the same language arts standards (Spanish Language Arts is a fifth core academic period for students in our bilingual program), we wanted to make sure that we co-planned our instruction so that students would not be subjected to the same lessons between our two classes. We outlined the theme (culture and food), and chose two mentor texts (novels) that would support that theme. The two texts we chose had copies in English and Spanish. They were also comprised of vignettes, short stories that could be taught in the time frame we were given. We agreed on which chapters of our mentor texts would be taught in Spanish and which would be taught in English. We then decided that the purpose of working with these texts was twofold: 1. to make connections to the cultural celebrations and food discussed in the vignettes, and 2. to teach students how to analyze the parts of a story and then use that understanding to write their own narratives about a celebration or family cultural event that also involved food. Everyone had to write a narrative in English, and the students in my class had to also write a different narrative in Spanish.
In my Spanish Language Arts classroom, students spent the first three weeks working with oral storytelling in Spanish, while the English Language Arts teacher used children's books in English to identify the components of a narrative. During the second three weeks, we expanded to use the chapters from the novels we had chosen as mentor texts. In Spanish Language Arts, students read three different chapters in Spanish, analyzed them, and drafted three short stories about their own cultural events that were thematically-connected to the ones they read about. In English Language Arts, students read different chapters in English, and did the same kind of writing. For the final three weeks, students in each class chose two different drafts to finalize and publish--one story in English and one story in Spanish. The students then created cartoneras in which to place their published stories.
The cartonera was an authentic purpose for students to present their writing in a creative way. By blending art with this writing assignment, students were able to express themselves visually and linguistically. Their stories are also complete with a recipe for the food described in the event from their personal narrative, and we are planning to host a family potluck as the culminating event. Families will be able to share their culture, build community, and take pride in their children's work, all at a collaborative event held at our school.
Who could have guessed that a little piece of cardboard would become a unique way of showcasing students' talents and inviting families to our building?
