Elementary Classrooms Secondary Classrooms Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month with 10 Inspiring Texts

These engaging texts help students explore identity, family, and belonging through Hispanic and Latino voices and experiences.

Hispanic Heritage Month, which runs from September 15 to October 15, is an opportunity to center stories and perspectives that reflect the range of Hispanic and Latino experiences. Through poetry, memoir, short stories, and nonfiction, students can examine themes like identity, family, community, and civic power.

This collection spans grades 3-12 and gives students opportunities to analyze character development, point of view, and author's purpose while engaging with meaningful and relevant texts.

You can access all of these lessons for free in your CommonLit educator account. Just go to CommonLit.org, click "Sign Up," choose "I Am an Educator," and confirm your school email.

"Domino Sundays" by Vivian Fernandez (3rd Grade)

A game passed down through a family can become the place where a child learns to trust herself. In this story, Yolanda goes to the park with her abuelo every Sunday to watch him play dominoes, and this week she's his partner for the first time. She fumbles at first, then relaxes into the game and wins the first round for them both. This is a great text for teaching how a character's feelings change over the course of a story.

"I Will Be a Chemist: Mario José Molina / Voy a ser Químico: Mario José Molina" by Alma Flor Ada (4th Grade)

One gift from one aunt can change the way a child sees the world. In this poem, Nobel Prize winner Mario José Molina describes the chemistry set his Aunt Esther gave him and the wonder he felt looking through a microscope at the small parts that make up everything. This poem is a great literary tie-in to a science unit, and it's also well-suited for thinking about the impact of relationships and how one person's encouragement can shape a life.

"The Challenge" by Gary Soto (5th Grade)

Trying to impress someone can lead a person to make some questionable decisions. In this short story, José challenges his crush Estela to a racquetball game and tells her he's won several tournaments, even though he's never played. He borrows his uncle's racket, tries to learn the game in a day, and loses 21 to nothing. This is a great text for teaching character development, because José's attitude toward Estela changes over the course of the story. It's also useful for teaching point of view, since readers understand José's feelings and the reasoning behind his actions.

"Names/Nombres" by Julia Alvarez (6th Grade)

A name can be the first thing a person is asked to give up. In this memoir, Julia Alvarez describes arriving in New York from the Dominican Republic and the many ways people rename and mispronounce her and her sisters. She reflects on wanting to conceal her Dominican identity and blend in, and on her family's certainty that her name will be known throughout the country someday. This memoir is a fantastic choice for analyzing how point of view contributes to the meaning and theme of a text.

"Amigo Brothers" by Piri Thomas (7th Grade)

Sometimes the hardest opponent to face is your best friend. In this short story, longtime friends and accomplished boxers Antonio and Felix are set to fight each other in a championship match. They train apart so the friendship won't distract them, box three evenly matched rounds, and then embrace and walk out of the ring arm in arm before the winner is announced. This short story is a strong selection for teaching how authors use internal dialogue to reveal characters' feelings.

"Latin American Trailblazers In Major League Baseball" by T.J. Resler (8th Grade)

More than a third of MLB players are Latino today, and getting there took decades of persistence. In this nonfiction text, students learn how Cuban students studying in the United States brought baseball home with them, how talented Latino players were largely excluded from the major leagues until the 1940s, and how integration opened the door to careers that reshaped the sport. This inspiring text is great for teaching analysis of the interactions between individuals, events, and ideas, because the author emphasizes how individual players made professional baseball more inclusive.

"Daughter of Invention" by Julia Alvarez (9th Grade)

A school assignment can turn into a fight about what a family is allowed to say out loud. In this short story, a girl recently arrived in New York from the Dominican Republic is chosen to deliver a speech at a school assembly. She pushes past her fear of public speaking and reads the speech to her parents. Her mother loves it, her father calls it disrespectful and tears it up, and the narrator is devastated. Her mother helps her rewrite it, the assembly is a success, and that night her father comes home with a brand new typewriter and an apology. This excerpt from How the García Girls Lost Their Accents is great for a lesson on characterization and how flashbacks help develop a story's characters. 

"American History" by Judith Ortiz Cofer (10th Grade)

A first crush and a national tragedy can land on the very same afternoon. In this work of historical fiction, Elena befriends Eugene, the boy who moves in next door, and the two make plans to study together. Those plans fall on the day President Kennedy is assassinated, and while the adults in Paterson are distraught, Elena is thinking about Eugene. When she arrives at his door, his mother sizes her up, realizes she lives in the apartment building next door, and tells her to stay away. This text is great for discussing the role race and class play in shaping characters' points of view.

"How Willie Velásquez Organized for Latino Voting Rights" by Patricia Guadalupe (11th Grade)

In this nonfiction text, students learn how Willie Velásquez grew up in a working-class family in San Antonio, drew inspiration from Black civil rights leaders, and helped found the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project in the early 1970s. By the time of his death in 1988, SVREP had helped elect hundreds of Latino officials, and in 1995 he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. This text is excellent for teaching how authors use evidence to support an argument, since the article backs its claims with both quotes and statistics.

Excerpt from "Pedro's Theory: Reimagining the Promised Land" by Marcos Gonsalez (12th Grade)

Visiting a place your family comes from can raise more questions than it answers. In this excerpt, the narrator moves between Frida Kahlo's home in Mexico, an exhibition of her work at the New York Botanical Garden, and the grandmother's house in Puerto Rico he never visited before Hurricane Maria. He criticizes the entitled behavior of tourists in Mexico, acknowledges that he's a tourist too, and imagines a world organized around a shared sense of belonging rather than exploitation. This text is great for examining the effect of an author's use of stream of consciousness on a text's overall meaning and impact.

Frequently Asked Questions

When is Hispanic Heritage Month?

Hispanic Heritage Month runs from September 15 to October 15 each year.

Are these texts free?

Yes. Every text in the CommonLit Library is free with an educator account, including reading questions, assessment questions, answer keys, and paired texts. Just go to CommonLit.org, click "Sign Up," choose "I Am an Educator," and confirm your school email.

Can I print these lessons?

Yes. Each text can be downloaded as a PDF or assigned digitally to students.

What grade levels are available?

The CommonLit Text Library includes lessons spanning grades 3-12.

Next Steps

All 10 texts are ready to assign. Create a free CommonLit account to unlock the full library, including guiding questions, assessment questions, answer keys, and paired texts for every lesson.