Today we will finally finish reading The House On Mango Street. At this point, there are only three vignettes left: "Alicia & I Talking on Edna's Steps," "A House of My Own," and "Mango Says Goodbye Sometimes."
As a whole group, we begin by having a student volunteer read the vignette "Alicia & I Talking on Edna's Steps." After it is read, I ask my students why they think this vignette follows "The Three Sisters," and why they think Alicia is the last "neighbor" that is featured in the book. I want them to make the connection that Alicia functions as another character foil for Esperanza, a foil that possesses similar characteristics to Esperanza with one key difference: their age.
After the discussion of Alicia, I ask another student volunteer to read the final two vignettes. Once read, I open up the discussion for final thoughts/impressions on how the book ends and of the book overall.
When my students have had enough time to share their thoughts, I tell them that I have something to share with them, a speech given by a recent high school graduate to a group of future teachers. I explain to them that the speaker's message is a real-world extension of Esperanza's final message in the book, that of giving back to the community from which you come.
After we have watched/listened to the speech, I allow my students to share their thoughts and reflections about it and how it connects to Esperanza's message.
Because we are at the end of a unit, having completed The House On Mango Street, it is time for a unit exam. I have listed the texts and the concepts covered in the unit on a brief powerpoint and share them with my students as a form of review.
I believe in giving unit exams after an extensive exploration of a text as one form of assessment. In the past, I have allowed such exams to be open-note, but I have decided against that method this time, as I feel that most if not all texts and concepts in the unit have been thoroughly covered.
Since I will not be posting a lesson on exam day, I have attached the Unit Exam in this lesson.
As a final project for The House On Mango Street, I want to give my students an opportunity to fully embrace Sandra Cisneros's style, sentence fragments and all, now that they have performed within the boundaries of academic writing in their narrative essays.
I explain that in the spirit of the vignettes that comprise The House On Mango Street, each class will be creating their own collection of vignettes, titled The School on the Corner Of 6th and Lafayette, which is the location of our school in Los Angeles. I instruct my students to approach our school from any angle they desire--the neighborhood, the building (interior and/or exterior), the students, the teachers, the cafeteria and/or food, etc--and to create a vignette that represents their best use of voice and figurative language. Each vignette should be no less than a 1/2 page in length.
My students are given the remainder of the period to begin drafting their vignettes with the advantage of my assistance and input, should they so desire. I anticipate that some will jump right in (this is the green light they have been waiting for, to write more poetically) and that some will need me to help them brainstorm ideas.
The final drafts of their vignettes are due the following class session.