New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs

Level: Classroom
Grades: 6-8
School Quarter: 3

Related Grade Level Activities:

All-School Cultural Festival

Activity: Tourism Fair
Class / Grade Partner Activity:

  • Choose a culturally significant site in New Mexico. It can be your culture or a different culture.
  • Work with a partner to design a tourist brochure. Connect the site to United States history and culture.
  • Create a virtual field trip to their location.
  • Set up presentations in a gallery walk style.
  • Test your brochure with your family/friends/community outside of school.
  • Share your brochures with your class in a ‘tourism fair’
  • Template for teachers to ask local printing shop to donate printing copies of brochures. Students can share them at all-school cultural festival

Theme Alignment: Historical Reflection and Progress
Contemplating where New Mexico and the nation were 250 years ago, where we are today, and the journey taken to get here; and history as a lens to inform our futures.

Toolkit Overview (In this toolkit):

  • Background
  • Step-by-step guide or how-to checklist to implement a schoolwide festival
  • Resources

Background:

In 1776, New Mexico already had multiple cultures contributing to the unique character of the region. Since then, people from all over the world have come to call New Mexico home.

How To:

Link to Implementation / How to

Resources

In Classroom Activities:

  • Overview of diversity of New Mexico’s population
    • Point out lesser known histories, including black colony established in 1900s, Buffalo Soldiers
    • European groups, including Italian and German
    • Asian, particularly Vietnamese (after fall of Saigon), Korean, Filipino, Chinese, South Asian