ENGAGE:

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Poster Dialogue  (15 minutes)

Prior to the activity, write open-ended statements/prompts at the top of a poster-sized piece of paper. Put that paper on the wall of your classroom or on the whiteboard but be sure that your students can easily approach it. Then invite students to use a marker and to silently respond to each statement in any order they prefer. Students are welcome to put a checkmark by a statement if someone has written exactly what they wanted to say.  If students finish early, ask them to read and respond to what other students have written. Once the task is complete, assemble the pages in the same space in front of the full group. Facilitate the group's meaning-making process to synthesize the meaning of the individual posters. Conclude by making meaning between and across posters that look at the same idea from different points of view as described below. 

 

Prompts – The street where I live is …

                       My town is….

                       The house/apartment I live in is…

 

Side coaching  questions to encourage students:

What are the sounds of the street/town/neighborhood where you live?

What are the smells of the street/town/neighborhood  where you live?

What is the vibe/ feeling of the  street/town/neighborhood where you live?

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Reflection

• Which words/responses got the most check marks on the page? Which words/responses did you notice the most as I read what was written?

• Try to group responses based on their similarities! Ask students to do that in groups and to share with the class. They can write down their group’s responses.

• I heard a variety of responses. Why do you think that is?

   

Transition: The House on Mango Street is a novel that explores the question of house/home and belonging. Let’s think more about how living in one street has shaped Esperanza and other characters in this novel. 

 

EXPLORE

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Roll on the Wall (10 minutes)

Draw a large outline of Esperanza (e.g. head/shoulders or human figure) on paper; leave plenty of space to write inside and outside the figure. Invite the group to call out words, phrases, or messages that Esperanza receives externally, from other people, friends, parents, institutions, etc. Write responses on the outside of the figure. When a message is offered, invite students to think about where it comes from. Connect messages to the messenger visually on the paper through color or line and encourage students to find multiple answers. Types of responses can also be grouped together on the paper, e.g. positive on one side of the figure, negative on the other,  to provide further visual organization. 

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Next, ask students how Esperanza might feel inside, based on the outside messages, and write those feelings on the inside of the figure with another color. Finally, ask students to connect specific “outside” messages to the inner feelings, and draw lines between those connections on the figure.

(If you have a big group of students, feel free to divide them into small groups of four or five and let each group do the same task.) 

 

Reflection

• What messages and people impact Esperanza the most? Why?

• What does Mango Street say to her sometimes without words? How does she feel about that?

• How would you describe her inner world?

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Transition: 

After students explore the impact her surrounding has on Esperanza we can encourage them to explore her feelings and inner world  more by using the following DBP strategy.

 

Sculptor/Clay  (25 minutes)

Have participants get into groups of 3  and spread out around the room. 

One person in each pair will be the sculptor and the other two will be the clay. The sculptor will mold the clay modeling the shape of Esperanza's emotions evoked by Mango Street and the shape of the messages that Mango Street is sending to her. Groups work silently and simultaneously. After they finish, the sculptures remain frozen in their image  and the sculptors walk about their newly created “gallery.” The sculptors are asked to describe what they see and make inferences and connections between the sculptures and what was shared before about the impact that Mango Street has on Esperanza. Afterwards, the sculptor and clay switch roles and the cycle of creation and reflection are repeated.

Reflection

• How did it feel to be clay? How did it feel to be a sculptor?

• What body shapes did we see in our statues? 

• How did these shapes represent Esperanza’s feelings?

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FINAL REFLECTION (5 minutes):

D: In which ways have growing up in certain streets impacted the way we experience the world?

A: How does Esperanza react to all the messages she gets because she is a girl from Mango Street? How does Mango Street talk to her? What are the messages that evoke the strongest reaction from her?

R: How can we react, how can we deal with harmful messages that we get from our surroundings?