Newspapers

If you are doing a newspaper unit, your students might find it interesting to do a study of how different ethnic groups are represented in the newspaper.

• How many stories members of a group are mentioned in
• What types of stories members are mentioned in
• How members of a group are represented in the stories
• What sections of the paper represent members of a group the most
• Compare the amount and type of representation in the newspaper with representation in other forms of media
• Compare the amount of representation in the newspaper with the group's percentage in the area's population
• If a person only read the newspaper and never came into contact with people, what might he or she think about each ethnic group?
  

It would be interesting to see what types of conclusions students draw from a study such as this.

Students could break the data down further and look at how men and women of particular groups are represented. Or they could look at different age groups.

Special Months

I think that it is important to include multicultural literary works throughout the year, but these are the months dedicated to the following groups:

Black History Month: February

Women's History Month: March

Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month: May

Caribbean-American Heritage Month: June

Hispanic Heritage Month: September 15-October 15

Native American Indian Heritage Month: November

Asian and Asian American Young Adult Literature

Here are some websites I found for Asian and Asian-American Young Adult Literature:

Children's and YA Books With Asian American Themes
http://www.cynthialeitichsmith.com/lit_resources/diversity/asian_am/asian_am.html

Asian-Pacific American History Month (New York Public Library)
http://kids.nypl.org/holidays/asian.cfm

Paper Tigers: Reading Lists and Links
http://papertigers.org/listLinks/readingLists/index.html

Asian American Literature for Young Adults: A Bibliography
http://falcon.jmu.edu/~ramseyil/asian.htm