Write the introduction you would give before a guest speaks to your class for Hispanic Heritage Month.Angle: three sentences. Who they are, where they are from, why you asked them.
Write the welcome note beside a classroom map of the Spanish-speaking world: what the pins mean and how to add one.Angle: one color for a place someone's family comes from, another for a place someone has read about.
Write the story of a recipe that traveled from a Spanish-speaking country to a kitchen near you, told by the recipe.Angle: who carried it, what had to be swapped for something else, which step is never written down.
A class holds a Hispanic Heritage Month potluck; write the table from one end to the other, dish by dish.Angle: say who brought each dish and which one was gone first.
An arepa can be stuffed with a filling; write the menu board of an arepa stand, with five fillings you would choose.Fact: the arepa is a flatbread of ground corn dough, known above all in Colombia and Venezuela.
Costa Rica and Nicaragua both call gallo pinto a national dish; write the friendly argument between two cooks, one from each country.Fact: gallo pinto is rice and beans, and its name means spotted rooster in Spanish.
Empanadas are made by folding dough over a filling; write the job each helper has in a kitchen that is making a hundred of them.Fact: the name comes from the Spanish verb empanar, to wrap or coat in bread.
For Hispanic Heritage Month, choose one dish from a Spanish-speaking country, look it up and write a food critic's review of it.Angle: where it is from, what goes in it, how it is eaten. Check each in two places.
In El Salvador the pupusa has a holiday of its own; invent a holiday for a food your family loves and write how it is kept.Fact: the pupusa's day falls on the second Sunday of November each year.
In Mexico a tortilla is a flatbread and in Spain it is an omelette; write the dinner where two cousins find that out.Fact: tortilla means little cake in Spanish, and in Spanish cooking it names a kind of omelette.
Paella is named after its pan; write about a meal at your own table that could be named after the thing it is cooked in.Fact: paella comes from the Valencia region of Spain and is named for its wide, shallow pan.
The pupusa is the national dish of El Salvador; write the scene at a griddle where a grandmother teaches a grandchild to shape one.Fact: a pupusa is a thick stuffed griddle cake, traditionally eaten by hand.
Write a six-line poem for Hispanic Heritage Month in which every line holds one food and the person you would eat it with.Angle: no describing words for the food. Let the people do the describing.
Write about a family table where the talk switches between Spanish and English before the plates are cleared.First line: Pásame the salt, my uncle said, and nobody noticed but me.
Write the story of a recipe that traveled from a Spanish-speaking country to a kitchen near you, told by the recipe.Angle: who carried it, what had to be swapped for something else, which step is never written down.
Music and dance 12
A cajón is a box that the player sits on and plays with the hands; write a story in which a plain box turns out to be the best instrument in the band.Fact: the cajón is a box-shaped instrument from Peru, and its name means box or crate.
A güiro is played by scraping a stick along the notches in a hollow gourd; describe its sound to someone who has never heard one.Fact: the güiro is heard in Cuban, Puerto Rican and other Latin American music.
A school band is learning a piece for Hispanic Heritage Month and the drummer keeps speeding up; write the rehearsal.First line: We finished the song eleven seconds before the song did.
Describe a dance from a Spanish-speaking country by its sounds alone: the shoes, the skirts, the hands, the floor.Angle: watch a video with your eyes shut first, then with the sound off.
Flamenco can be made with a voice, a guitar and clapping hands; write a flamenco performance as heard from the back row.Fact: flamenco grew up in Andalusia, in southern Spain, and castanets are among its instruments.
In the cueca, the national dance of Chile, each dancer carries a handkerchief; write the dance as the handkerchief would tell it.Fact: the dancers trace circles, with turns and half-turns.
Maracas are usually played in pairs; write what the two of them say to each other during a song.Fact: a maraca is a rattle shaken by its handle, heard in many kinds of Caribbean and Latin music.
Merengue is the national dance of the Dominican Republic; write a first lesson as told by someone with two left feet.Fact: merengue is a kind of danced walk, open to people with or without dance experience.
Tango began in the 1880s along the river between Argentina and Uruguay; write the evening a brand-new dance is tried for the first time.Fact: the tango grew up in the port neighborhoods on the Río de la Plata.
Tell how a song in Spanish travels: a grandparent learned it in one country and a grandchild sings it in another.Angle: what changed on the way: a word, the speed, the reason for singing it.
Write about a song in Spanish that you know by ear, and what you think each line means before you look it up.Angle: write your guess, then the real meaning, then which of the two you like better.
Write the program notes for a Hispanic Heritage Month concert: three pieces, the country each comes from and one thing to listen for.Angle: look each piece up first. A reader should be able to trust every line.
Words in two languages 12
A new student speaks only Spanish and you speak only English; write the first lunch the two of you eat together.First line: We started with pointing, and pointing got us as far as the apples.
A question in Spanish opens with an upside-down question mark; write a note to a friend arguing that English should borrow it.Fact: in Spanish a question begins with ¿ and ends with the ordinary question mark.
A sign at your school is to be printed in English and in Spanish; write what it says and why both languages belong on it.Angle: choose the sign first: the front door, the library, the lunch line. Ask a Spanish speaker to check your wording.
Armadillo means little armored one; invent an animal, give it a Spanish name that describes it and write its field guide entry.Fact: English took the word armadillo from Spanish.
Colorado, Nevada, Montana and Florida are names from Spanish; write a weather report for one of them that explains its name.Fact: colorado means red, nevada snow-covered, montaña mountain and florida flowery.
Label ten things in your classroom in both Spanish and English, then write about the one whose Spanish name you like better.Angle: look each word up, copy its accent marks, and say the pair aloud before you choose.
Learn to count to ten in Spanish, then write a story of ten sentences, each one opening with the next number.Angle: look up the spelling of each number before you begin, and say them aloud once.
Mosquito means little fly in Spanish; find three more English words that came from Spanish and write a story that uses them all.Fact: patio, rodeo and canyon all came into English from Spanish.
Tornado and hurricane both reached English through Spanish; write a storm story that stops once to say where its word came from.Fact: hurricane comes from the Spanish huracán, which Spanish took from the Taíno language.
The word alligator began as two Spanish words; write the moment a sailor hears the animal's name and gets it slightly wrong.Fact: alligator comes from the Spanish el lagarto, the lizard.
Write a poem for Hispanic Heritage Month with one line in English and the next in Spanish, about one thing you can see from your seat.Angle: borrow the Spanish from a dictionary or a classmate, and check each line with a speaker.
Write a short dictionary of five words from Spanish that you already use without thinking, with a sentence for each.Fact: plaza, cafeteria, siesta, tomato and chocolate all came into English from Spanish.
A place on the map 12
Choose one Spanish-speaking country, find it on a map and write directions to it from your own front door.Angle: oceans, borders and compass points only. No street names.
Compare the place where you live with a town of the same size in a Spanish-speaking country.Angle: weather, breakfast, the way to school. Look up what you do not know.
Describe a journey in words from Spain to the southern tip of South America, naming each sea, coast and mountain range on the way.Angle: use an atlas. Write it as a ship's log or a bird's diary.
Find a town, river or mountain near you with a Spanish name and write the day somebody chose that name.Angle: look up what the words mean first. The meaning is usually the story.
Five countries share one independence day; write the phone call between five cousins, one in each, on the morning of September 15.Fact: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua all mark independence that day.
Hispanic Heritage Month begins on September 15, in the middle of a month; write a short speech that tells your class why.Fact: September 15 is independence day in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua.
Hispanic Heritage Month was a single week before it was a month; write the letter that asks for the extra weeks.Fact: the week began in 1968 and became a month in 1988.
Mexico marks its independence on September 16 and Chile on September 18; write that week's diary as a child in one of them.Fact: both days fall inside Hispanic Heritage Month, September 15 to October 15.
Pick one country that Hispanic Heritage Month honors and write a guide for a visitor's first morning there.Fact: it honors Americans with roots in Spain, Mexico, Central and South America and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean.
Write a postcard from a city in a Spanish-speaking country that you have looked up, with three true details and no more.Angle: one thing to see, one to eat, one to hear. Check each before the stamp goes on.
Write about a place in your own town where Hispanic heritage can be seen: a shop sign, a mural, a bakery, a street name.Angle: describe it for someone who walks past every day and has never looked.
Write the welcome note beside a classroom map of the Spanish-speaking world: what the pins mean and how to add one.Angle: one color for a place someone's family comes from, another for a place someone has read about.
Someone I would interview 12
After an interview for Hispanic Heritage Month, write the person a letter that tells them which answer you repeated at home that night.First line: I did not know a river could be a border until you told me.
Choose someone you know who speaks Spanish and write the five questions you would ask in an interview for Hispanic Heritage Month.Angle: no question that can be answered with yes or no.
For Hispanic Heritage Month, write the interview you wish you could have with a great-grandparent you never met.First line: My first question is about the photograph, the one with the horse.
Interview a classmate about something their family brought from a Spanish-speaking country: a recipe, a song, a saying or a game.Angle: get one quotation exactly right and put it first.
Interview a relative or neighbor who grew up in a Spanish-speaking country about their town, and write the answer that surprised you most.Angle: ask what the street sounded like in the morning.
Interview someone about a word in Spanish that they miss hearing, and write up what they told you.Angle: who used to say it, and in what voice.
Interview the owner of a shop or a restaurant with a Spanish name, and write the story of the name.Angle: take a grown-up with you, and ask the owner before you write anything down.
Turn an interview into a poem: take the five best sentences someone said about their Hispanic heritage and give each its own line.Angle: change no words. Choose the order.
Write a profile of someone in your community whose family came from a Spanish-speaking country and whose work everybody depends on.Angle: ask what an ordinary Tuesday looks like. Ask permission before you share it.
Write an interview with someone who changed countries as a child: the first day at the new school, in their own words.Angle: ask what they understood, what they pretended to understand, and who helped.
Write the introduction you would give before a guest speaks to your class for Hispanic Heritage Month.Angle: three sentences. Who they are, where they are from, why you asked them.
You may interview one person from history for Hispanic Heritage Month; write who you would choose and your first three questions.Angle: look the person up first, so that no question is one a book already answers.
How it works
Each of these Hispanic Heritage Month writing prompts starts from something real: a dish, an instrument, a word English took from Spanish, a date on the calendar. Lines marked Fact follow the US National Archives, the Census Bureau and Wikipedia.
Read the full guide
Hispanic heritage writing prompts that start from a fact
Nearly half the prompts carry one: where a dish got its name, which country calls a dance its own, what a borrowed word meant in Spanish. The month itself was a week from 1968 and has been a month since 1988.
Prompts any writer in the room can use
A writer needs no Hispanic heritage of their own to use the list. Some prompts ask for research: look up a dish, a dance or a city, then write. Others ask for an interview with a neighbor, a relative or a classmate, and the job is to listen and get the words right.
Copy Spanish words with their accent marks and the ñ, exactly as a dictionary prints them.
For an interview, write the questions down first and leave room under each for an answer you did not expect.
Questions and answers
What are good Hispanic Heritage Month writing prompts?
Ones with something real to start from. Write the phone call between five cousins in five countries on the morning of September 15, or the dinner where two cousins learn that tortilla means one thing in Mexico and another in Spain.
When is Hispanic Heritage Month?
September 15 to October 15 in the United States. It opens on September 15 because that is independence day in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. Mexico's falls on September 16 and Chile's on September 18.
Are there writing prompts for Hispanic Heritage Month that need no research?
Yes. A new student who speaks only Spanish shares your lunch table. A drummer keeps speeding up at rehearsal. A song in Spanish travels from a grandparent to a grandchild. Each can be written from imagination alone.