Hispanic Heritage Month: Teach the Culture Through the Stories Kids Already Love
Every year from September 15 through October 15, classrooms across the country celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, recognizing the histories, cultures, achievements, and contributions of Hispanic and Latino Americans. Instead of the beginning of the month, the celebration begins September 15 because it coincides with the independence anniversaries of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua, followed closely by Mexico on September 16 and Chile on September 18. What began as Hispanic Heritage Week in 1968 was expanded to a 30-day observance in 1988.
But here’s the Teachertainment question:
What if Hispanic Heritage Month didn’t feel like a detour from the curriculum?
Movies, television, music, theatre, dance, and comedy already give students doorways into Hispanic and Latino history and culture. The trick is turning the entertainers they recognize into a reason to investigate the much bigger world behind them.
Start With Coco, Then Go Beyond Coco
For many elementary students, Pixar's Coco may be one of their most familiar encounters with Mexican culture on screen. That's a fantastic doorway, but it shouldn't be the whole hallway. After watching a clip, looking at an image, or discussing the movie, students can investigate the real traditions represented in the story.
Where is Mexico?
What is Día de los Muertos?
Why are photographs, music, food, and family stories important to cultural traditions?
Then widen the lens. Mexico represents just one part of an enormous and diverse collection of Hispanic and Latino experiences. That distinction matters. The Smithsonian notes that Hispanic generally indicates a connection to Spain or the Spanish language, while Latino can encompass identities and heritages that include Indigenous, Black, Asian, European, and other backgrounds.
In other words, Hispanic heritage isn't one food, flag, country, accent, or story. And that's where things get interesting.
Turn Encanto Into Geography
Disney's Encanto gives teachers a colorful doorway into Colombia. Instead of stopping at "the movie takes place in Colombia," put Colombia on a map. Have students identify its continent, neighboring countries, major cities, landscapes, and ecosystems. Then compare. How far is Colombia from Mexico? What countries separate them? Which one is closer to the equator? What geographic features appear in Encanto? How might geography influence food, clothing, architecture, music, or daily life? Suddenly, a movie students already know has become a geography investigation.
Let Music Do Some Teaching
Hispanic and Latino culture has profoundly influenced the music students hear around them, making music an especially rich entry point. Try building a classroom listening map. Introduce age-appropriate examples of musical traditions associated with different places and communities, then have students locate those places on a map. Students might compare instruments, rhythms, tempos, languages, or purposes for music. Older elementary students can research how musical traditions travel and change when communities migrate. The Smithsonian's Hispanic Heritage Month resources specifically include opportunities to explore Latino music, poetry, art, oral histories, food, family traditions, and more. Now your music break is also social studies!
Make a Classroom Lotería
Here's another activity that crosses subjects beautifully. Introduce students to lotería, the traditional Mexican game often compared to bingo. Instead of simply playing, have students design their own classroom version. Cards could represent notable people, vocabulary words, countries, landmarks, foods, musical instruments, animals, or cultural traditions students have researched. To create a card correctly, students first have to understand what they're representing.
The National Education Association's updated Hispanic Heritage Month educator resources specifically recommend creating original lotería cards as a hands-on classroom activity. Research disguised as game design? That's Teachertainment territory.
Meet the Entertainers
Instead of beginning with a traditional country report, start with someone students may already recognize. The packet spotlights Selena Quintanilla, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Shakira, America Ferrera, Jennifer Lopez, Bad Bunny, Pedro Pascal, Gloria Estefan, Ariana DeBose, and George Lopez. Their stories connect entertainment to Mexican, Puerto Rican, Colombian, Honduran, Chilean, and Cuban heritage.
Each profile becomes an informational-text lesson with vocabulary, comprehension questions, a culture connection, and a bigger question that asks students to think beyond celebrity. Selena opens a conversation about Tejano and cumbia. Lin-Manuel Miranda connects Puerto Rican heritage, New York, and Broadway. Shakira provides a doorway into Colombia and global music. Ariana DeBose lets students compare generations through West Side Story. George Lopez turns comedy into a discussion of family, culture, stereotypes, and storytelling.
The celebrity is the hook. The learning is everything behind the hook.
TEACH IT WITH TEACHERTAINMENT
The Hispanic Heritage Month interdisciplinary packet for Grades 4–6 includes a teacher guide, standards connections, vocabulary, a heritage map, 10 entertainer profiles, reading and writing questions, comparison activities, a timeline, review activities, a culminating project, research organizer, and answer key.
Connect the Stars
Once students know the individual stories, the packet asks them to make connections. “Connect the Stars” pairs entertainers around a common idea: Selena and Bad Bunny for Spanish-language music across generations; Shakira and Gloria Estefan for crossing languages and musical traditions; Lin-Manuel Miranda and Ariana DeBose for Hispanic heritage on Broadway; and America Ferrera and George Lopez for Latino families and representation on television.
Students compare what the entertainers share, where their backgrounds or careers differ, how heritage connects to each story, and how each person influenced entertainment. That moves the lesson from remembering facts to analyzing relationships.
Sneak in Math, Research and Media Litera
The packet is interdisciplinary on purpose. An entertainment timeline has students order the featured performers by birth year and calculate differences between dates. A “Who Am I?” review turns biographical details into a quick game. Throughout the unit, students work with maps, visuals, vocabulary, informational text, research, comparison, and media representation.
Teachers can use the packet as a one-week mini unit, stretch it across three weeks, assign individual profiles as student-choice reading, or pull pages for centers and enrichment. It also includes differentiation suggestions for emerging readers, on-level readers, advanced readers, and English learners.
Give Students the Spotlight
The culminating “Hispanic Heritage Spotlight” project puts students on the production team. They can choose someone from the packet or nominate a new Hispanic or Latino entertainer, creator, athlete, author, artist, filmmaker, chef, or public figure.
Their job is to teach the audience: Who is this person? What places and cultures connect to their heritage? What did they accomplish? What challenges did they face? How did they influence entertainment or other people? Students can package their research as a magazine feature, biography poster, podcast, TV news segment, short documentary, slideshow, museum exhibit, imaginary interview, or mini classroom lesson.
Same research standards. Much better packaging.
Don’t Let the Learning Stop October 15
Entertainment works best in the classroom when it isn't the destination. It's the doorway.
A student who walks into a lesson because they recognize Coco, Encanto, a favorite athlete, a song, or a familiar celebrity can walk out knowing something about geography, history, language, art, mathematics, or another person's experience. So this Hispanic Heritage Month, don't be afraid to begin with something students already love. Then ask the most important question in Teachertainment: Where can we take the learning from here?
For additional classroom materials, the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Latino's Hispanic Heritage Month resources include bilingual activities, vocabulary, background information, and educator guides for use at school and at home.
Jake Perlman is the founder of Teachertainment, blending education, entertainment, and pop culture to turn learning into an unforgettable experience.
