Activities
Activity 1: Hair
I will distribute copies of the “Hairs” chapter from Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street. Once everyone has a copy, I will read it aloud to the class. In pairs, the students will break down the text and identify each person whose hair is being described along with the description that goes with each person. Still working in pairs, the students will also respond to the following questions about the longer description of the mother’s hair: Why does Esperanza spend so much time describing her mother’s hair? How do you think Esperanza feels about her mother? What does her mother represent? The student pairs will share their responses with the class. Once they have finished sharing and we have finished discussing the text (structure, figurative language, and tone), I will ask the students to emulate Cisneros by writing about their own families’ hair. If they do not have a connection to their parents, or if they do not have siblings, they can describe the hair of anyone who is important to them. Students should write more about the most important person in their lives, just as Esperanza wrote about her mother. Once they have finished, the teacher will ask for volunteers to read their pieces to the class.
Activity 2: Food Poetry
Moving from the body to things we put in our bodies, I will distribute copies of “Butter” by Elizabeth Alexander. After reading the poem aloud, I will model close reading of the poem, specifically looking at word choice, figurative language, and structure. The students and I will discuss how this close reading informs their understanding of the poem. Then, I will ask the students to emulate Elizabeth Alexander’s style by writing their own food poem based on the food in their own lives. First, the students will have to prewrite to generate ideas. They will need to list all of the important food in their home culture before they can try to write their own version of the poem. Students will then workshop the poems with a partner or two before submitting their completed poem. The finished product could have a visual component: they may illustrate their food poetry with drawings or pictures cut from ads or magazines. Then the poems can be displayed for everyone to admire.
Activity 3: Connecting with a Hillbilly
The class will read an excerpt from Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance. After distributing the excerpt (pages 69-80), I will read the beginning of the excerpt to the students while modeling reading strategies aloud and reader-response journaling on paper. Students will complete the reading individually or in pairs while responding to the text in their journals. I will ask the students to primarily make text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections as they read and respond. As they work, I will walk around the room to monitor their progress. Once they have finished reading and responding, I will ask students to share one of their connections with the class.
Activity 4: Compare & Contrast James Baldwin, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Claudia Rankine
As class begins, I will project an excerpt from Booker T. Washington’s “An Address on Abraham Lincoln” and ask the students to explain what they think it means. I will then briefly explain the historical context around it before introducing James Baldwin, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Claudia Rankine. The students will read Baldwin’s “A Letter to My Nephew” in its entirety along with a excerpts from Coates’s Between the World and Me and Rankine’s Citizen in order to compare and contrast the three pieces. They can make their compare and contrast notes in any way they feel comfortable, I will also provide a triple venn diagram for organizational ease. Once they have finished comparing and contrasting using their notes or the triple venn diagram, they will synthesize that information by writing it into paragraph form.
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