Elizabeth Hoving, a Spanish teacher, sent me these smash doodle pages quite a few months ago that her students created while reading Vida y muerte en la Mara Salvatrucha. Her students were required to create an entry for each chapter, and each entry had to include words, sentences and images. Each entry also had to clearly represent the events of the chapter. Sometimes, students worked on their entries while listening to Elizabeth reading the chapter aloud; other times, they completed them after they read specific chapters. In addition, students created a cover to represent the events of the book. The final project that she assigned was to write a letter a la abuelita from anónimo and bundle it with the entire journal and cover. She loved the final product, and students loved the assignment!! I am sharing four sample journal entries with her permission that she selected because they are great examples of what she was looking for while being very different from each other.
If you ever want to share sample student work from an idea that you read about on this blog, please email it to me! (Read the original smash doodle post here.) It's a great opportunity for other teachers to get ideas and visualize the activity. Thank you, Elizabeth!! These are awesome!
