The House on Mango Street was a great text to begin teaching with. The diverse themes that emerged allowed me to design fun and creative learning activities that many students enjoyed. Below are three learning activities that students engaged with during this unit.
Learning Activity #1: This lesson teaches students to analyze and emulate the writing style of Sandra Cisneros in “The House on Mango Street”. Students read and analyzed Cisneros’ work, then spent time analyzing their own homes and what it meant to them in order to write their own creative vignettes. Below you can read all about my planning of this activity and see the worksheets that students were given.
** I find that teacher modeling truly helps students understand the goals of an assignment and gives students an example of what their completed work could or should look like. Here is my sample vignette focused on home (this was also a great way for students to get to know me).
Learning Activity #2: This lesson teaches students to analyze two related texts, Sandra Cisneros’ “Hips” and Lucille Clifton’s “Homage to my Hips”. Students read and analyzed both texts as a class and then students worked in small groups to fill in different sections of the compare and contrast Venn Diagram. To complete the assignment students wrote a short open response paper comparing and contrasting both texts. Below you can find my Learning Activity Plan and a picture of our collaborative Venn Diagram.
**Below you can see the beginning stages of the class Venn Diagram, I jotted down ideas on the board as students shared what they wrote on their individual worksheets. You can also see an introduction paragraph for the short open response portion of this lesson. The students and teacher collectively wrote this paragraph which truly helped ELL students begin writing.
Learning Activity #3: This lesson tasked students to focus on and analyze a recurring theme in the novel. After choosing a theme students had to “write” a found poem in which they discussed the theme chosen using direct quotes from the novel. This lesson was designed as a small group activity in which students were to write one poem of at least 20 lines. I changed the design of this lesson as I watched students succeed and struggle. Many students preferred to work alone, others focused their poems on multiple themes, and some even went the extra mile and wrote original poems related to the themes in the novel. Below is a round sheet with background information on this lesson.
** Below you can see the worksheets handed to students for this lesson.
