La migración de las mariposas

This is the second post in my ongoing series of connecting STEM with Spanish class. Check out the first post Experimenting in the Target Language here.

For the last several years I have had one grade level participate in Journey North's Symbolic Migration. If you haven't checked out Journey North's amazing resources I'm telling you to open a new tab, go there now, and then come back. I'll wait here while you have a look.....

https://www.learner.org/jnorth/tm/symbolic/jr/KidsJourneyNorth.html

So you've seen the site? And it's amazing right? Did you see the section about the Symbolic Migration? Each class makes their own butterfly out of a file folder and each student colors their own true to life paper monarch butterfly. After assembling all the necessary pieces I send off our butterflies which then "migrate" to Mexico for the winter.

Last summer I attended the KY Center's Arts Integration Academy where me and other Spanish teachers as well as arts teachers learned how to either integrate the arts into our Spanish classrooms. I left this Academy knowing that somehow I wanted to take our symbolic migration and incorporate the Arts. So this past year I did it with 4th grade and it turned into a year long project that extended into Library and Computer classes and ended with artwork in the hallways and displayed at the local public library.

In Spanish class we looked at the Journey North maps to see if the butterflies had made it to Mexico yet. We played a matching game where they had to match pictures with sentences about migration. We colored and wrote about butterflies in our interactive notebooks. We talked about Day of the Dead and the role butterflies play in that tradition. And we got our file folder butterflies ready to migrate.

Target vocabulary:

Need to go

Need to return

Months of the year

It's cold.

It's hot.

North, south, east, west

Where?

When?

Why?
Animals
What animal do you like?

In Library and Computer class, the students did research and filled out a graphic organizer about butterfly conservation and what we can do to help sustain and grow the butterfly population in our own community. Keeping the elements of design in mind they then created an informational poster about what they had learned in Computer class. (This is my secret tip to including more cross curricular content and stay in the target language - get other teachers to teach the English parts for you!)

Our local library down the street has a butterfly way station with butterfly friendly plants and feeders so I contacted them and asked if they would be willing to display a few of our best informational posters. We decided that in the spring when they had classes about gardening would be the best time and they did a great job creating a beautiful display!

I selected a few posters to be displayed at the public library.

In addition to creating posters to display, the students also used their interpersonal skills to create a 3-D mural on one of the hallway bulletin boards. They worked in teams to staple and glue the butterflies in place with a strict ¡No inglés! policy while they worked. This was one of their favorite activities and at least once one of our administrators walked by and was amazed at how much Spanish she heard! We placed several of our posters by the artwork and discussed what other high traffic areas could we place the remaining so more people would read them and talked about how art impacts people's beliefs.

Finally after many months of waiting the butterflies returned to Kentucky...but they weren't our butterflies. They were from all over the United States AND they also had letters and pictures from the students in Mexico. So we dragged out the atlases, I put up the state abbreviations on the board, and the students busied themselves with finding out where all of las mariposas had come from. 

Overall, this year long project was a huge success. My students were engaged and excited to not only learn about butterflies and Mexico but also about how learning Spanish can help them cooperate to solve global problems. 

Check out Fun For Spanish Teachers and Mundo de Pepita's posts on how they teach butterfly migration!