This year was my first year using the book LA LUCHA by Melisa Lopez from FluencyMatters/Wayside Publishing. The book is a historical fiction book about a teenager year old named Javier who works in the fields picking crops alongside his dad. Javier hears about a movement lead by Cesar Chavez and wants to join, despite his father’s objection. It’s a great book that brings in our US history of the Farmworker’s Movement, and the work of Chavez. It is written in the past tense, and is probably ideal for 2nd or even 3rd year students. I managed to use it with my 8th graders in their second year of level 1. The teacher’s guide was super helpful as well. Here are some other resources that I used during the novel:

In our last post we described how we had students review chapter 6 by going back and making a list of the 20 most important words/phrases from the chapter. They then work with a partner to share lists and circle any they have in common. They then get together with a larger group to come up with a list of 10 keywords from the chapter. Lastly, I had my students try to write a summary of the chapter in Spanish using as many of those 10 words.

In previous years, I have done a Farmworkers unit, which is included in our Dolores Huerta resource. You can now purchase just the storyboard portion of that unit, which fits in perfectly with La Lucha. It gave my students extra input reading the captions and then illustrating to show comprehension. I gave them time to illustrate and color in class, which gave us all a light day amid a heavy week.

After reading chapter 8, my students read the presentation about Pesticidas from the official Teacher’s Guide. I then had them create an infographic about what they learned. I had to teach them what an infographic was first, and then set them loose on Canva.

We also added an interview with a “farmworker” to our Dolores Huerta unit where students can read or listen to a farmwork talk about the conditions they face and how Dolores and Cesar are helping them.