<p>This collection includes instructions and ideas for a classroom activity designed to get children and their families talking and creating together. It is suitable for K-5 classrooms, as an art, English, or social studies-based activity. Included here are examples of student work (images and video of students reading their books), as well as images from classroom displays.</p> <p>In this activity, a 1st grade teacher from a bilingual school in Washington, D.C., used what we called the "Connections" handmade storybook design to have her students share important family lessons. She described how she did the activity: "I loved the book project and found that it was a way to get parents involved in making a book with their child at home. I pre-made the books since I thought the instructions were a little tricky. The instructions were to discuss and write about a Life Lesson that their families taught them. Our students created bilingual Spanish/English books. The format was perfect for this because it could be English on one side and Spanish on the other. Students enjoyed hanging their books up outside of the class for others to read and then sharing them with the class. It really helped them to understand what important life lessons families teach them and it helped to bring students' home knowledge into the classroom. We connected the books to our Life Lessons unit and plan to do the same thing this year."</p> <p>This project is based on a handmade book design that can be found, along with several others, in another collection: Fun for the Whole Family: Making "Family Memory" Storybooks: <a href="http://learninglab.si.edu/q/ll-c/1tozk88HXhnFBU6d">http://learninglab.si.edu/q/ll-c/1tozk88HXhnFBU6d</a>.</p> <p><em>#FamilyLit #FamilyLiteracy </em></p>

<p>This collections comes from a African American History Month family festival created to complement the exhibition, "The Black List." Included here are a gallery tour with curator Ann Shumard, and interviews with puppeteer Schroeder Cherry, guitarist Warner Williams, the Taratibu Youth Association Step Dance Group, silhouette artist Lauren Muney and collage artist Michael Albert.</p>

<p>This teaching collection asks students to look closely and think critically about society and culture by examining a portrait of Joe Bataan, analyzing his lyrics, and considering the cultural forces that shaped him and his legacy.  Joe Bataan, a musician who was born to Filipino and African American parents, raised in Spanish Harlem, and identified with Puerto Rican culture, became one of the founders of Latin Boogaloo music in New York City. What started out as a local music by young folks has become a global phenomenon.</p><p>Included here are </p> <ul><li>the portrait from the National Portrait Gallery (NPG)</li><li>selected lyrics from the song, "Young, Gifted, & Brown"</li><li>three suggested Thinking Routines - "See, Think, Wonder," "What Makes You Say That?," and "The 3 Ys" - from Harvard's Project Zero Artful and Global Thinking materials</li><li>a bilingual video with Smithsonian National Museum of American History curator Theo Gonzalves</li><li>a podcast, "Bataan's Boogaloo," with NPG director Kim Sajet and Smithsonian Latino Center director Edouardo Diaz</li><li>a discussion/writing prompt</li></ul> <p>For use in Social Studies, Spanish, English, and American History classes<br></p> <p>#LatinoHAC #EthnicStudies<br></p> <p><em>This Smithsonian Learning Lab collection received Federal support from the Latino Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Latino Center. </em></p>

<p>This collection complements Unit 4 of the EdX course, <em><a href="https://www.edx.org/course/teaching-with-the-smithsonian-addressing-21st-century-challenges-in-the-community-college-classroom">Teaching with the Smithsonian: Addressing 21st-Century Challenges in the College Classroom</a></em><em>. </em>It includes resources to support the session presentation by Katrina Lohan of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. </p> <p></p> <p>#MCTeach #EdXTeach</p>

<p>This collection contains assets and resources designed to help teachers (art, English, ESOL, social studies, and media technology), museum educators, and community-based informal learning educators recreate their own "Today I Am Here" project, based on the specific needs of their classroom or learning community. </p> <p>"Today I Am Here" is a project in which students make a handmade book from one piece of paper, that tells the story of how they got to where they are today. This project is wonderful in a classroom to show the breadth and diversity of the class, and to encourage cross-cultural understanding. </p> <p>Inside you will find instructions and images for the various components of the project, as well as samples of student work.  </p> <p>The "Today I Am Here" book design is one of many available in another collection: Fun for the Whole Family: Making "Family Memory" Storybooks: <a href="http://learninglab.si.edu/q/ll-c/1tozk88HXhnFBU6d">http://learninglab.si.edu/q/ll-c/1tozk88HXhnFBU6d</a>.</p> <p><em>#FamilyLit  #FamilyLiteracy  #FCPSFamilyLiteracy  #NPGTeach</em>  #LatinoHAC<br></p>

<p>Art, Creative Writing, and Public Speaking: A Portraiture Workshop for the ELL Classroom</p> <p><em>Our Lives as Art</em></p> <p>This collection includes instructions and documentation of a replicable art-based program for English Language Learners (ELLs). The information included can be adapted for high school students and speakers of any language, including native English speakers. Activities were designed to foster in participants important skills such as visual literacy, public speaking, creative writing, art appreciation, collaborative learning, and advocacy, and also to develop empathy, confidence, and self-esteem. </p> <p>The collection was created by Beth Evans (National Portrait Gallery), Micheline Lavalle (Fairfax County Public Schools Family Literacy Program), and Philippa Rappoport (Smithsonian Office of Educational Technology). </p> <p>Keywords: ESL, ESOL, portraits, migration, immigration, stories, identity, monologues<br></p> <p>#NPGteach  #FamilyLiteracy  #FamilyLit  #FCPSFamilyLiteracy</p>

<p>This collection details a photography and community engagement project produced in partnership by the Fairfax County Public Schools Family Literacy Program, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Smithsonian Office of Educational Technology. It includes assets and resources designed to help teachers (art, English, social studies, and media technology), museum educators, and community-based informal learning educators recreate the program as is, or design their own, based on the specific needs of their classroom or learning community. </p> <p>For our project, pairs of native Spanish-speaking immigrant moms and their middle school children did a five-day (15 hours in total) training session at their school and at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. They learned about Dolores Huerta, portraiture, and photojournalism through the exhibition "One Life: Dolores Huerta." Participants took portraits of themselves, critiqued each other's work, and created photo exhibitions about their communities and important issues, that were displayed at the Hispanic Heritage Month Family Day at the National Portrait Gallery.</p> <p>Dolores Huerta, the "co-architect" of the American Farm Workers Movement and mother to eleven children, proved to be a huge inspiration to the participants. Before the workshop, 33 percent of the parents and none of the children saw themselves as able to make change in their community; after the workshop, 100 percent of parents and children reported seeing themselves as able to make change in their community. In addition, 100 percent of the mothers and 80 percent of the children reported that they believed they had increased their artistic skills.</p> <p><em>#FamilyLit  #FamilyLiteracy  #FCPSFamilyLiteracy  #NPGTeach</em>  #LatinoHAC  #EthnicStudies </p> <p>This collection supports Units 2 (What is the History - Civil Rights Movements) and 3 (Critical Geography and Current Issues) of the Austin ISD Ethnic Studies Part A course, and Unit 3 (Local History and Current Issues) of the Austin ISD Ethnic Studies Part B course. "What would you advocate for to beneficially change your community? How can you advocate to create change within your community?" "How do you understand the concept of community advocacy? What is needed for an individual to cultivate personal change?"</p> <p><em>This Smithsonian Learning Lab collection received Federal support from the Latino Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Latino Center. </em></p> <p><em><br></em></p>

<p>In 2011 the Smithsonian joined with the Pearson Foundation to train ARTLAB+ teens to document personal stories at Smithsonian Heritage Month family festivals. ARTLAB+ is a design studio based out of ArtLab space in the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. The teens captured visitor voices through several years, covering a variety of topics including views on race, culture, nature, belonging, music and food.</p>

<p>This collection comes from a set of lessons plans to introduce students to the culture of Puerto Rico by looking at customs and objects - specifically masks - connected to the annual celebration of Carnival. The lessons are split into four levels, covering grades K-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12. They were originally adapted from a set of activities that appeared in <em>Our Story in History: A Puerto Rican Carnival</em>, a website produced by the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History - also shown in a link inside the collection, along with instructions for students to make their own masks. The lessons include objects from the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian in New York, the George Gustav Heye Center, and the Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History. </p> <p><br /></p>

<p>This teaching collection guides  viewers through a close looking exercise to explore American artist Edward Reep's painting of a shrine in Bologna, Italy, based on photographs and notes from his time as a combat artist in Italy during World War II. The collection is set up for students to look closely at the painting using Harvard's Project Zero Thinking Routine "See, Think, Wonder," and then to consider the historical and political context of the time, as well as the artist's personal experiences in Italy during WWII, in order to better understand Reep's homage in painting to the thousands of Italian Resistance fighters and citizens who lost their lives fighting against the Nazi occupation during World War II. The activity concludes with another Project Zero Routine from the Global Thinking series, "The 3 Y's."</p> <p><br /></p>

<p>This teaching collection uses Project Zero thinking and other portrait reading strategies to look critically at and compare  three portraits of <strong>Francis Russell</strong> "<strong>Frank</strong>" <strong>O'Hara</strong> (March 27, 1926 – July 25, 1966), an American writer, poet, art critic, and curator at the Museum of Modern Art. O'Hara, who was considered to be one of the most important poets of mid-twentieth-century America, died an untimely death at age 40, and is memorialized in these three portraits in the Smithsonian collections - by Grace Hartigan, Alice Neel, and Don Bachardy.</p> <p>This collection is set up to first look carefully at Grace Hartigan's portrait, using one or all of three suggested looking strategies. Then viewers can look at the other two portraits, considering additional information about sitter Frank O'Hara and the artists, in order to have a better sense of the three portraits, the sitter, the artists, and the times in which they created.</p> <p>Keywords: Portraiture, Abstract Expressionism, Expressionist, Avant-Garde, Irish</p>

<p>The videos shown here are from a series, hosted by the Smithsonian Office of Educational Technology and the Smithsonian Heritage Months Steering Committee, that features colleagues from around the country doing innovative work in the fields of community outreach and heritage. Featured here are colleagues from the Tenement Museum in New York City presenting, "Widening the Conversation: Involving Communities in Interpretive Planning," Martha Norkunas presenting "Listening Across Differences," and Faye McMahon and Benjamin Virgilio presenting, "Not Just Child's Play: Emerging Tradition and the Lost Boys of Sudan."</p>