September is Hispanic Heritage Month. Because the illegal immigration problem may have affected public attitudes toward Hispanics, students can easily overlook the contributions of millions of other Hispanic Americans who are legal citizens.

Student research activities provide an opportunity to focus on the positives of legal immigration and many of the Hispanic Americans who have worked hard, contributed to our success as a country, and achieved the American dream like so many other ethnic groups who came before them.

Activity: Teachers should assign different categories of successful Hispanic Americans for each student to research and summarize. Students should prepare a two-minute oral (or PowerPoint) report summarizing the success of three notable people in the category assigned to them. Oral reports enhance standards-based language arts skills, so important for future success. They also help to curb the plagiarism so common today in same-topic written reports. But equally important, they provide an opportunity for students to learn from each other by sharing their new knowledge.

Student summaries should include the following information about each topic person:

• When and where were they born (and how did they became citizens, if applicable)?
• What background did they come from, including their education?
• What challenges did they overcome to gain success?
• What are their most notable accomplishments?
• What accomplishment you think is most important and why?

Use this pathfinder to hands-on resources:

• Click the Subject Heading option for the Search box.
• Type Hispanic Americans in the Search Box, then click Search.

Students will get more than 50 different categories to explore based on your assignment including: actors and actresses; athletes; artists; authors; musicians; politicians; and poets as examples. Students can further be focused on gender: boys can report on notable men and girls can report on notable women.