Introducing the Unit

Activator: Write in your journal or notebook your thoughts about the following question: “What are the factors that help to define who you are?”

Teacher: Have students share some of their initial ideas.

Responses may include, but certainly will not be limited to, the following: culture, family, peers, group membership (school, clubs, interests and activities), pop/commercial culture. Students might also discuss how they create an identity in opposition to these forces, such as developing beliefs and practices that may contrast with those of family or peers. Another rich area for reflection would include the notion of a person’s online identity—how the information shared through a social network, a game-playing avatar, or anonymous internet chats may create a completely different definition of one’s identity.

Text Reading: Read out loud or individually the section from The House on Mango Street titled “My Name.” What clues can you find in the text to help you characterize the speaker? By reflecting on her name, what conclusions does Esperanza draw about who she is?

Personal Connection: Complete the worksheet on the following page, reflecting on your own name and how it connects to your identity. Then, write an imitation of “My Name” that shows your own creative thoughts about how your name reflects who you are.

My Name

In the fourth chapter of The House on Mango Street, entitled “My Name,” Esperanza talks about her name. She tells what her name means in Spanish and in English. She tells where her name came from (it was her great-grandmother’s) and how she (Esperanza) feels about her name.

Your assignment is to gather information about your name (first and/or last). You will need this information when you complete a writing assignment, in class, about your name.

  • Where does your name come from? Does it have a special meaning? If so, what?______
  • Do you have a family member with the same name? If so, who? ______
  • What was the family member with your same name like? ______
  • Do you wish you had a different name? If so, what would it be?______
  • If you would choose a different name, why would you choose that different name? ______

“MY NAME” WRITING TASK

Now that you have completed your homework and learned something about your name, your task is to tell us something about your name the way Esperanza does about hers.

  • Re-read the chapter on pages 10 and 11, “My Name.”
  • In the same way that Esperanza does, write an explanation about your feelings about your name, where it comes from, and what it means to you.
  • Use the chapter in the book as a model, but be sure that all the ideas are about you and your name.
  • Write your explanation on your own paper, proofreading it carefully.
  • Your explanation should include the following:
  • the information you learned from your homework assignment—where your name comes from, whom you were named after, what the name means
  • an honest explanation of howyou feel about your name
  • descriptive language, including metaphors or similes, that describes your feelings about your name.

Before you turn your writing in, check to make sure it meets all the following objectives:

  • Does the writing use “My Name” from The House on Mango Street as a model? In other words, are you telling a story and using details the way the speaker in the book does?
  • Does the writing include specific, concreteinformation about your name, its origins, and its associations?
  • Does the writing include descriptive language that compares your feelings about your name to other ideas?
  • Is the writing free of errors, such as spelling mistakes, sentence fragments, and verb agreement problems?