We are nearing the anniversary of Hurricane María again this week and because many of my students are old enough to remember it, I like to spend some class time talking about Puerto Rico. Last summer, Puerto Rico came out with an 8 mini-episode series called Discover Puerto Rico with Lin-Manuel Miranda, which is great to use with students. The series is hosted by Lin-Manuel Miranda and each 3-5 minute clip highlights a different aspect of life in Puerto Rico. While the goal was to draw tourists back to the island after Hurricane María, it really is a celebration of life on the island. While most of the episodes are primarily in English, there are also multiple interviews in Spanish with English subtitles.
Since these videos came out last summer, I’ve only used them once with my students. Last year, I had the students watch the videos individually a day I was absent and write short responses in a Google Form. I wasn’t sure what my students would think of the videos, but they loved them! They are so used to watching short bites of video content that they really connected to the material and were excited to learn about Puerto Rico. It also helps that they know who Lin-Manuel Miranda is and having him as the host complemented my Guess Who? activity nicely. Because I just don’t have a ton of class time this year, I only have 2- 50 minute synchronous classes a week, I am going to have my students watch the videos independently again during asynchronous time. However, since these videos are so short, they would be easy to incorporate into a daily lesson plan. My colleagues and I have also discussed how great it would be to use these videos while reading the book, María María.
Especially since Puerto Rico has such close ties to the United States, I think it is important to teach my students about it. I’ve also found that lots of students have been to Puerto Rico, so they are excited to share their experiences about their travels or family connections. The videos offer simple, quick ways to add in the Culture and Connections Standards and since there are some Spanish interviews they get some Interpretive Communication too!
