About Historia Portfolio Studio
Look first. Then talk.
Historia Portfolio Studio builds Spanish teaching resources around Hispanic art, history, and culture. We make what a Spanish teacher opens on Monday, so her students have something real to say.
Where it started
It started with one painting.
Picture study is simple. You look at one painting, quietly, until you can tell someone what’s in it. Then you tell them.
We started there, and we noticed something that changed how we think about teaching Spanish. The words come easily when there’s something real in front of you to describe.
So we built a five-step flow around it. Students look first, then draw what they remember, then say what they think, then write it down.
Introduce
The artist, the artwork, and the world around it.
Observe
The story behind it and the elements of art.
Draw
The artwork comes away, and students draw what they remember.
Talk
The artwork comes back, and students discuss its principles and its message.
Write
A summary, a commentary, and a conclusion.
Nobody runs out of things to say about something they’ve really seen.
How it grew
Teachers shouldn’t have to piece it together.
We’re in California, and the first version was small. It was called Art Study in Spanish, and it began as three PDFs. They were good, and they were separate. A teacher had to piece them together herself, and teachers don’t have the time to piece things together.
The turning point was building what a teacher actually opens. Slides she can fill with her own artwork. Prompts for each step. Sentence starters at four levels, from pointing and naming words to analyzing and arguing. A vocabulary menu. Fillable Google Docs. Teacher resources.
Once the pieces worked together, the PDFs became a system, and that system became Historia de Arte.
Today there’s a teaching system you can use with any artwork, and a complete art portfolio of seven Hispanic artists. Teachers use them to talk about art in their classes and groups, and to help students find the words for what they see.
Our audience is quiet, and we’d rather show you one real note than a wall of numbers. A high school teacher, Jose M., who used the early version, wrote that these words “turn my students’ writing into another level of sophistication.”
The founder
Hi, I’m Rachel Havana.
I build Historia de Arte from California. I have a degree in Spanish, more than 20 years of bilingual experience, and I design curriculum.
Every lesson in it comes from one belief: a language lives inside the people who speak it.
I’m still building. I want Spanish classes where students look closely, find the words, and keep talking after the bell.
What we believe
Culture belongs inside the language.
Language belongs with history, geography, reading, writing, art, and culture. Pull it apart and students collect words they have no reason to remember. Put it back together and every word comes with a place, a face, and a story.
Looking comes before talking. What a student notices in a painting becomes what she has to say.
The teacher is the expert in her room. We give her a strong structure and leave the decisions to her, because the best-built lesson still belongs to the person standing in front of the class.
Ask your students what they see. Then listen!
The free lesson is a complete 15-minute Spanish lesson built around one painting, scripted in Spanish and English. Teach it once, with one class.
Send me the free lessonQuestions first? [email protected]
