AAPI Heritage Month ELA Lessons for Your Classroom

Asian American and Pacific Islander, or AAPI, heritage shows up in the stories, voices, and experiences of many popular authors, poets, and creators. This is a great time to bring those perspectives to the head of the class in your ELA lessons—without overhauling your existing lesson plans.

With Newsela ELA, you can plug AAPI heritage into what you already teach. Use texts, poetry, and paired lessons to build background knowledge and help students connect identity, culture, and literacy.

• Explore AAPI identity through poetry
• Teach AAPI culture with folktales
• Analyze AAPI representation in media
• Examine AAPI voices in publishing
• Study family and identity in AAPI texts
• Build connections with AAPI paired texts

[Explore AAPI identity through](id-poetry)

Key takeaways:

• Use poetry to teach AAPI heritage through identity, voice, and lived experience.
• Build background knowledge quickly by connecting figurative language to real cultural experiences.
• Support student reflection and discussion with texts that make identity visible.
• Differentiate across grade levels using accessible poetry and flexible lesson structures.

Poetry is an easy way to bring AAPI heritage into your ELA block, but you don’t need to change your existing lessons. Instead, swap in a text that centers on AAPI identity and experiences.

These lessons help students connect figurative language to real voices. You’ll get strong discussion, personal reflection, and meaningful analysis without adding extra prep.

How can you teach AAPI identity through poetry?

Help students explore how identity shows up in language, metaphors, and self-expression. Focus on how authors describe who they are and how they fit into their communities. To build that understanding, use the following activity:

• First, have students read Janet Wong’s poem “I am not a plucot (but I kind of am)” and analyze how Wong uses metaphor to explain mixed-Asian identity.
• Next, as a class, explore how people of mixed-Asian descent self-identify in their AAPI communities.
• Finally, ask students to talk in small groups and discover what “Asian American” means to different AAPI communities, like those from South and Central Asia, East and Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Islands. Come back as a class and have the individual groups do a share-out.

You can also use this poem and lesson with your youngest students with a version designed especially for the elementary grade band!

What can students learn about the immigrant experience through AAPI poetry?

Students can explore AAPI heritage by analyzing how poets describe belonging, identity, and place. This format helps them see how small details like images, word choice, and tone reveal what it feels like to grow up between cultures.

Follow this lesson to get started:

• First, read the poem “Peaches” by Adrienne Su, multiple times as a class.
• Next, have students annotate words and phrases that stand out and add notes about how those passages make them feel.
• Finally, come back as a whole class to share the phrases and words highlighted, and discuss how these images and phrases help readers understand the speaker’s views and her surroundings.

[Teach AAPI cultures with folktales](id-folktales)

Key takeaways:

• Use folktales to build cultural background knowledge tied to AAPI heritage.
• Connect theme and tradition so students see how stories reflect values across AAPI communities.
• Support comprehension with familiar structures to make accessing the text easier for all learners.
• Create discussion opportunities around perspective, tradition, and how stories are passed down.

Folktales are an easy way to bring AAPI heritage into your classroom. Students already know how stories work, so you can focus on meaning instead of structure.

These texts help students see how traditions and beliefs show up in storytelling. You’ll get strong comprehension, discussion, and cultural awareness opportunities without needing heavy scaffolding.

What can students learn about AAPI cultures through folktales?

Students can explore how folktales reflect values, traditions, and beliefs across cultures. These stories show what communities pass down, what they value, and how they explain the world. For AAPI Month, try selections like:

• “Heungbu and Nolbu: A Korean Story”
• “The Raja and the Rice: An Indian Story”
• “Spring and Autumn: A Japanese Story”
• “Pan Gu: The Chinese Origin Story”

[Analyze AAPI representation in media](id-tv)

Key takeaways:

• Use media to explore AAPI heritage and representation in ways students already understand and engage with.
• Build critical thinking skills by analyzing authentic vs. inauthentic representations.
• Connect literature to modern media so students see how stories evolve across formats.

Students may be more engaged with content they have seen on screen. With media tie-ins, you can double down on the chance to dig in and make things they already enjoy academic.

By connecting AAPI heritage to media, you can help students question representation, identity, and perspective. It’s also a great way to bridge literature to content they already know and like.

How can you analyze AAPI representation through media and text?

Help students compare how stories are told across formats through multimodal learning. Focus on what feels authentic, what doesn’t, and how those choices shape how people understand culture. Use Gene Luen Yang’s graphic novel “American Born Chinese” and its Disney+ screen adaptation as model texts in the following lesson:

• First, introduce students to the author, novel, and series to build background knowledge.
• Then, ask students the guiding question, “How do authentic and inauthentic representations affect how others outside a cultural group view people who identify as part of the group?”
• Extend the lesson and encourage students to write the outline or overview for a book or script that features a character that matches their self-identity or cultural background, and why the elements they included help with cultural representation.
  

[Examine AAPI voices in publishing](id-publishing)

Key takeaways:

• Highlight gaps in representation so students understand why publishing decisions matter.
• Bring real-world connections by linking literature to industry access and visibility.
• Strengthen argument and writing skills through discussion and persuasive tasks.
• Show students how advocacy works by connecting reading to action and awareness.

Students likely don’t know what the publishing process looks like before books and stories get to them. They don’t see the decisions about who gets their work shared and who’s left out. This is a chance to make parts of the process visible.

By connecting AAPI heritage to publishing, you help students understand whose stories are told and why. It also gives them a real reason to read, discuss, and write with purpose.

Why is it important to highlight AAPI voices in publishing?

AAPI heritage is still underrepresented in publishing. In 2020, only 22 of the 220 authors with books on “The New York Times” fiction bestseller list were of AAPI heritage. When students see which stories get published, and which are missing, they may better understand how access, visibility, and personal bias shape what we read.

To build understanding of this topic, try the following lesson:

• First, assign an article that teaches about the challenges of bringing Vietnamese and other AAPI literature into the public sphere.
• Next, pose a compelling question, like, “Why is it important to highlight the voices of AAPI authors?”
• Finally, add an extension activity, like teaching students how to write a grant proposal to raise money for Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN) or similar organizations, and how they can persuade donors to spend money on the cause.

[Study family and identity in AAPI texts](id-family)

Key takeaways:

• Use personal narratives to explore AAPI heritage through family, language, and identity.
• Strengthen text analysis skills by focusing on how authors reveal feelings and experiences.
• Support evidence-based thinking with structured tools like T-charts and close reading.
• Build empathy and connection by examining how culture shapes family relationships.

Family stories can make AAPI heritage feel more real for students. These texts can help them see how identity shows up in everyday moments, especially in relationships and communication. These types of texts also give you a clear way to do analysis. Students can track evidence, study author choices, and connect personal experience to larger cultural ideas.

How can students explore family and identity in AAPI texts?

Analyze how authors describe family relationships, language, and identity. Focus on how small moments like conversations, traditions, and expectations can reveal deeper cultural experiences. Use the works of Chinese-American author Amy Tan as a starting point for this type of lesson:

• First, have students read Tan’s narrative essays “Fish Cheeks” and “Mother Tongue.”
• Next, ask them to complete a T-chart, listing evidence that helped them understand the speaker’s feelings and ideas on one side, and what tools the author used to help them understand the evidence on the other.
• Finally, have students read a biography about Tan to learn more about her childhood and her journey to becoming an author. Use this as a way to discuss how Tan’s personal experiences have shaped her writing.

[Build connections with AAPI paired texts](id-paired)

Key takeaways:

• Use paired texts to deepen understanding of AAPI heritage through multiple perspectives on similar topics.
• Strengthen comparison skills with structured tools like Venn diagrams and guided questions.
• Support text-to-self and text-to-world connections so learning feels relevant and personal.
• Make analysis more accessible by pairing fiction and nonfiction around shared themes.

Paired texts make AAPI heritage easier to explore from more than one angle. Students can compare perspectives, themes, and ideas without needing extra background before they read. This approach also helps you cover multiple skills at once. Check off comprehension, analysis, and connection with texts that work well together.

How can paired texts help students connect to AAPI heritage?

Paired texts help students understand AAPI heritage by showing the same idea from different angles. When students compare fiction and nonfiction, they see how culture, identity, and experience show up across texts.

You can use the following text pairs along with paired text analysis worksheets or Venn diagrams to help students answer comparison questions and track their observations:

• “Prince Fire Flash, Prince Fire Fade” and Connections to Japan
• “The Enchanted Pool” and Finding Joy in Aging
• “The Tanuki Kettle” and Japanese Culture

Keep AAPI heritage learning going all year with Newsela ELA

AAPI heritage shouldn’t be a one-month focus. These texts and activities give you easy ways to bring identity, culture, and representation into your ELA lessons anytime. 

With Newsela ELA, you can keep that momentum going. You’ll have to access to texts at multiple reading levels, built-in supports, and ready-to-use activities that help every student engage with AAPI heritage in a meaningful way.

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