DeVry University Advantage Academy
12th Grade Spanish 2 Class
How does affordable housing affect communities?
Project Description
The project is part of the unit 3 called “La vivienda (housing)," and adjusted to find a way to connect to the students' lives. Through this project, the main idea was to present and analyze the concept of affordable housing. For example, in order to analyze this concept, students had to analyze and reflect on the implications of affordable housing in their own communities. This project is connect to the CPS instructional cores centers on identity, community and relationships.
Stage 1: Understand the Question & Ground the Inquiry
In this first stage of the project, students took a cursory look at the concept of affordable housing. In order to do this, they watched a video where the idea of affordable housing in the United States is raised and how it affects communities. The video takes into account several factors that affect communities in a negative and positive way. Students then formed teams to analyze a different reading for each team related to points raised in the video. For example, one reading talks about gentrification in neighborhoods and how affordable housing affects those neighborhoods. The 3 readings had the primary function of expanding the analysis of the concept of affordable housing. That is, how does affordable housing affect communities?
Stage 2: Research, Analyze, and Assess
Through this second stage, students had to analyze and reflect on how affordable housing affects or could affect their future lives or neighborhoods. They observed how they themselves link different problems that surround the concept of affordable housing. This is of the utmost importance, since one of the main objectives of the project is to provide and analyze the implications of affordable housing today and how this concept positively and negatively affects their own neighborhoods. This is taking into account that many of the students live in neighborhoods with high rates of gentrification and displacement.
Stage 3: Communicate Conclusions and Take Action
For this third stage, the central idea is for students to write a reflective essay on the topic of affordable housing. After analyzing different sources of information, class discussions and data-analysis, students wrote an essay. In the essay, the students had to justify their position with information from the texts they had previously read. Writing an essay at first glance might not seem like much fun, however, by the end of this project the students were excited to share their views and read other students' essays.
Student Reflections
