Activity: 16 de Septiembre - The Changing Face of Mexico

Contact the local Hispanic cultural or resource center and establish contacts with Mexican immigrants. Have your students interview families, especially those with children of comparable ages and discuss how Mexicans celebrate the 16th of September in Mexico.
Establish contact with the e-Pals program and obtain e-mail penpals for individual students or the class as a whole. Have the students discuss the Independence Day celebrations that took place in Mexico in the last year with their new “virtual” friends.
Break the class into small groups and assign a different hero of the Mexican movement for independence (i.e. Hidalgo, Morelos, Iturbide), one to each group. Have the students research their person on the internet and in print sources and give a short presentation to the class. Have the students bring in artistic representations of their character from the murals of Diego Rivera or other sources.
Many of the ingredients of the recipes for this section need to be purchased at a Hispanic food market. Split the students into groups and have them each purchase one ingredient for one of the dishes.