Here's an idea from a fellow teacher:

Visualizing Memorable Details for a Memoir

This review/activity was generously shared with us by Nevada teacher Temoca Dixon during an
NNWP-sponsored inservice class
on narrative and memoir.

There are many marvelous "mentor texts" that can be used when teaching a unit on narrative or memoir. The review of the book, The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, and the activity on this page were written by a Nevada teacher during an in-service class for teachers sponsored by the Northern Nevada Writing Project.

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Washoe County teachers, click here to search for this title at the county library.

A Book Review & an Activity Suggestion:

In her memoir, The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros poetically writes about her life growing up in a Latino neighborhood in Chicago. Sandra writes with such rhythm and beauty. She chooses little details about her life, neighborhood, family, materialistic items and she takes the microscope to that idea and writes a vignette. We are studying the world along with Sandra through her writing.

The students can relate to Sandra’s story when the text is broken down and discussed with them. We have talked about the chapters “Those Who Don’t” and “There Was an Old Woman She Had So Many Children She Didn’t Know What to Do,” because many students can see their families or neighborhood in Cisneros’s words.

I also like to have the students read “My Name,” and we talk about what a name means to people. I will help the students research their name and the meaning and then I have the students write a poem about who they are and how their name represents them. It is very similar to the “Where I’m From” poem. The students must describe themselves with a balancing of showing and telling. I don’t want them to just tell me what their name means, but I want them to talk about little known facts of details about them that we may not know. This is great for students that have worked on the other pieces that ask them to search inside themselves. They have to look at themselves with a critical eye and think about how they can transfer what then see in their mind on to their papers.

Looking for complete writing lessons based on chapter books? Have you seen WritingFix's Chapter Books as Mentor Texts Collection?

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