Book Lineages in Spanish Heritage Class

Hi friends! I hope you are well! I just wanted to briefly share one of my favorite activities with you in case it feels like it might be a fit for your classes as we wrap up this year. Or, maybe it will fit in one of your reading units next year!

I’m not sure where I first learned about this activity, so if you know, please let me know so I can give credit where credit is due. This activity is a book lineage activity (which I’m happy to share with you too!). In short, students reflect on the books they’ve read and how those books have impacted them as a person and as a reader. You can adjust this activity to work for you! 

For me, this activity comes at the end of a reading unit during which students read at least 1 complete book (and most read 2 books). It’s a unit about critical literacy (hope to have a blog post up about that soon!), and during that unit, one of things we learn about is books as windows, mirrors, or sliding glass doors (terms coined by Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop). I usually just stick to the windows and mirrors part; books that are mirrors are books that reflect their own identities and/or experiences, while books that are windows are books that allow them to observe the identities and/or experiences of others.

I usually ask students to reflect on 4-5 books that they’ve read in the past, including the book(s) we just read for the most recent unit. For my purposes, I allow students to include books they’ve read in Spanish or English (this is important because sometimes the only other books my students have read in entirety, that they feel confident in writing about, are books for their English classes). II think a cool aspect of this assignment is that students put the books in order that they read, because the idea is to see how they’ve changed as a person/reader as they’ve read the books they’ve read. It would also be fun to do this on paper in a timeline format – let me know if you try it that way!

For me, we do it electronically in Google Docs. In a chart, for each book, in chronological order, they include:

• A picture of the cover of the book
• When they read the book
• A short summary about what the book is about
• How the book impacted them as a person or as a reader
• If the book is, for them, more of a window or a mirror, and why (if you didn’t do a lesson on Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop, you could do a mini lesson on it now, or leave this out)

It’s fun to have students pass these around and share these; it’s also a fun twist to ask students what book(s) they’d like to read next, after reading their classmates’ book lineages. More examples below!

I’d love to know what you think, team! Let me know if you try it and how it goes, and any adaptations that you’d suggest. Happy May, friends!

Adrienne