Day of the Dead is almost here! Especially since the movie Coco my students are more excited than ever to learn about this holiday. I use the following activities as an introduction to Day of Dead in my Spanish 1 classes. My first goal is to make it abundantly clear to my students that Day of the Dead and Halloween are not the same thing, even though they are celebrated so close together. I want them to learn basic information about the holiday and then connect what they’ve learned to their own lives. I love that I can set these up as an assignment in Google and then have my students work through them independently. And this year, it will be a great option for asynchronous work.
Activity 1 – Google Form
I use a Google Form to house all the materials I want my students to interact with, there are links to videos, a BBC article and a really cool interactive altar from the Peabody Museum. Rather than show a whole class video, I found about 20 minutes of video, mostly from YouTube. None of the videos are more than 5 minutes long and each one focuses on a different aspect of Day of the Dead. The videos are in English or in Spanish with English subtitles. My students are already so accustomed to watching short YouTube videos, which makes these short videos easy for them to digest. After watching the videos, the students are directed to read the BBC article and then play around with the interactive Altar. While they are doing all of this, they answer the questions in the Google Form. These questions ask for basic information about Day of the Dead and then ask students to compare it to Halloween. Once the students have learned about the history and traditions of Day of the Dead, they can move on to creating their own altars.
Activity 2 – Google Draw digital altar
This might be my favorite culture activity I do all year. Once students have watched the videos and interacted with the Peabody altar, they create their own digital altar in Google Draw. I give each student a blank Google Draw to work with and they create an altar to someone in their life they want to remember in death. Since not all my students have had someone close to them die, I give them the option to create the altar for someone who is still living that they would want to remember in death. The students find pictures on the internet and then write a short paragraph explaining who they are honoring and a little paragraph explaining what they placed on their altar. I always reassure them that no one other than I will look at the altar so they don’t feel nervous about sharing anything too personal. I love that this activity let’s me get to know my students better!
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