ENGAGE

Notes: Before teaching about the unfamiliar thing, I always like to meet the students where they’re at and connect first to their own experience. This activity does that. This activity also allows me to start a lesson in an active way but with a low-stakes and “low-focus” activity that doesn’t put students on the spot. Variation if students are particularly shy about standing up, use “Raise your hand if …”

 

WARM-UP/ INTRO (5-10 minutes)

Students are seated at their desks. Teacher asks students to:

• “Stand up if you have any brothers or sisters.”

• “Stand if you were named after one of your grandmothers (or your grandfather)”

• “Stand if you have ever moved from one apartment - or from one town or city - to another.”

• “Stand if you have ever heard a piece of neighborhood gossip.” 

• “Stand if you have ever felt like people make assumptions about you based on where you live.”

 

Pick one of two of these in order to solicit 1-2 examples from your students: “I see you stood up because you’ve moved before. Can you tell us in 1-2 sentences what that was like for you, or what you remember about that experience?” Preface the student inputs by saying, “just share what feels safe and okay for you to share with the class – you can leave out names or other identifying details.”

 

If you stood up for any of these statements, you have something in common with Esperanza, the main character of THE HOUSE ON MANGO STREET. She has a sister, Nenny – with whom she is close – and two brothers, Carlos and Kiki.

 

THE HOUSE ON MANGO STREET takes place in the 1960s. It is set in a Chicago neighborhood of mostly Latiné immigrants: the people in the neighborhood come from Mexico – like Esperanza’s family – as well as from Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic.

 

EXPLORE

WORD ORCHESTRA (10 minutes)

 

1. Print out the following phrases and cut them out into cards – each student receives one. If you have more students than cards, it’s fine for students to repeat words or phrases. In that case, you can print extra cards to reinforce a particularly important theme from the book – so that theme will get read/heard by the group more than once.

2. Ask students to stand in a circle in an open space in the room. 

3. EXPLAIN: “These are words and phrases from THE HOUSE ON MANGO STREET that the main character, Esperanza, and the other characters who live on Mango Street use to talk about their neighborhood.” Going around the circle, each student reads the word or phrase on their card/slip of paper. 

4. Ask students to silently identify an emotion that their phrase implies. Go around the circle again and ask students to read their phrase again, with expression, drawing upon the emotion they have identified. 

 

Sad red house

Bricks are crumbling

“The front door is so swollen you have to push hard to get in.” 

No yard

“The house I am ashamed of.”

Nosy neighbors

“You live there?”

“People like us keep moving in.”

Basement apartment

“They think we’re dangerous.”

“Butterflies are few and so are flowers”

“We take what we can get and make the best of it.”

“We are home. This is home.”

“All brown all around, we are safe.”

“Stupid people who got lost and got here by mistake.”

 

Reflection: “Based on these phrases, what is the neighborhood like around Mango Street? How would you describe it? How do you imagine Esperanza feels about her neighborhood?”

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GALLERY WALK (15 minutes)

I have placed images of Latiné life in Chicago in the 1960s around the room. Other images of Chicago are more recent but evoke the same world that Cisneros has written about in MANGO STREET. I’d like you to circulate and look carefully at the images. All the images for this activity can be accessed here!

 

Notes: Feel free to adjust the number of images in your gallery walk. It might also be helpful to have more than one copy of each picture on hand, in case you need to break larger groups into smaller ones for the activity below. 

 

Once students have had a chance to see all the images, ask them to stand next to the image that interests them the most – that they feel most drawn to. Assign one person in the group as a note-taker. As a group, they should discuss: 1) What they notice in the image – these are factual things like, “A brick house with white trim around the windows.” 2) What the image makes them wonder about, e.g. “The girl looks sad. I wonder what happened right before this picture was taken.”

 

At this point, you can have the groups share out their ‘noticings’ and ‘wonderings’ about their image - giving the rest of the group a more in-depth experience of the image. 

 

DRAMATIZING THE IMAGES (15-20 minutes)

Creating dialogue

1. MODEL: Using one of the images, e.g. the one with the girl in curlers and the little kids sitting on the steps, ask students as a whole class to imagine what the girl in curlers might be thinking. Create a line of internal dialogue using the sentence frame, e.g. “She thinks: I hope these curls will hold in this humidity!” Ask students to imagine one thing she might say and use the sentence frame: “She says: I can’t babysit tonight, I’m going out!”

2. Students work with their groups to write a line of internal dialogue (a thought) for one or more of the people in the image, and a line of spoken dialogue using the sentence frames.

   1. He/She thinks: ________

   2. He/She says: __________

 

Staging the image

1. MODEL: With a few student volunteers model how to re-create one of the photographs as a frozen image, using their bodies. Note that it doesn’t have to be literal, e.g. a student could “play” a tree, or create a window or a wall with their bodies.

2. With their group, ask students to recreate their photograph – or a piece of the image – as a frozen image.

3. Add their spoken lines to the frozen image. 

 

Putting it together

1. Devise a sharing structure, for instance:

1. Decide on the order that groups will share in.

2. Decide on a cue for the teacher to signal each group to begin, e.g. “1-2-3-action” or a drum beat or a bell.

3. Opening image: create a common opening image for all groups, e.g. students line up shoulder to shoulder. Layer in phrases from the word orchestra, with each student speaking their phrase from the word orchestra activity.

4. Transition: the teacher cues students with a clap/drumbeat/bell to get into their frozen image.

5. Once in the frozen image, students speak their two lines.

6. Closing: agree on a “button” for the end of the scene. Perhaps students get back into their line – standing shoulder to shoulder – and chorally/together say the words, “Mango Street!”

7. Repeat with the next group until all groups have shared.

 

DEBRIEF

• Debrief with students about the process of collaborating to create this short piece of theater.

• To what extent did acting out images from Mango Street change your perception of it?

 

REFLECTION:

DISCUSS OR WRITE

On the final page of THE HOUSE ON MANGO STREET, Esperanza says “I put it down on paper and then the ghost does not ache so much. I write it down and Mango says goodbye sometimes. She does not hold me with both arms. She sets me free.”

 

Who is the ghost of Mango Street? To what extent might Mango Street hold Esperanza captive? How might Mango Street set Esperanza free?