My Family [Description in 8 Rooms]

Title: My family

Author: M. Hill

Week: 3

Unit/Lesson Plan #: Identity

Unit theme: Identity

Textbook references:

House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros (HW readings)

Learning objectives:

- Generating descriptive expression

- Describing a person thoroughly

- Preparing for a descriptive paragraph

- Brainstrom techniques

Key Questions, Concepts, or Themes:

Stage 1: Warm-up: Begin ELA "Glossary of Literary Terms" - ADD personification & an example (maybe an example directly from HW paragraph!) - collect neighborhood HW

Stage 2: 8 Rooms activity...

a. Fold the sheet of paper into 4 boxes (model first few steps). These are now (front & back) “8 rooms”
b. In the first room, write the name of a person (someone you know well, such as a family member or a close friend)
c. In the second room, describe the person’s physical appearance (What does their hair look like? What does their face look like? How do they walk? In this box, try out at least one metaphor to describe some aspect of their physicality)
d. In the third room, describe the person’s voice. What adjectives could you use to describe it? Is it loud? Is it soft? Kind? Angry? What is it like? (Use a simile or metaphor)
e. In the fourth room, write down things that the person likes to do or does well.
f. In the fifth room, write down why this person is important to you
g. In the sixth room, write down an experience that you often have/had with the person (i.e., “when my sister and I walked to school together every day,” “when my grandmother would make me dinner”). Describe this event.
h. In the seventh room, answer the following: “if this person was a food, what would he or she be?” (OR: write down a place/places where the person can often be found - describe them!) The eighth room is still empty – you can jot down ideas about the person that come to you as you write!

Stage 3:

udents will review their brainstorm, and will practice writing a topic sentence (or two!) that they could use for their paragraph about this person (using process of topic sentence writing introduced in previous “paragraph” lesson). They can freely form their sentences or use the topic sentence formula: an interesting subject + your feeling about it = a good topic sentence. Students will then turn and talk to share their topic sentences with a neighbor and act as peer reviewers

Homework: (attach/link digital resources):

For homework, students will use the framework created to write a descriptive paragraph about their person.

Read the following from House on Mango Street:

"Cathy Queen of Cats"

"Meme Ortiz"

"There Was an Old Woman She Had So Many Children She Didn't Know What to Do"

"Darius and the Clouds"

"Sally"

Assessments: (attach/link copies)

__ Group assessment

__ Observation of process/student work

_X_ Self-assessment by student

__ Teacher generated assignment

_X_ Written project

_X_ Test/Quiz

__ Other: ____________________________________