Goals

Develop critical thinking, reading and writing skills in response to literature. Analyze elements of writing and storytelling that create good stories. Explore and make personal connections with the characters, themes, cultures, and events of the book.

 

Details

Duration: N/A

Assessments: Student reflections/journals, Student writing

Materials: Woman Hollering Creek, Reading Process Project handout

 

Description

How does Cisneros create such moving and vibrant stories in such short vignettes? How can we learn from her writing to create wonderful personal stories of our own? Woman Hollering Creek provides an opportunity for us to learn about cultures with which we may or may not be familiar, the Mexican-American and Mexican cultures. The stories in the book also allow us to explore ways that we can make personal connections to characters and situations that, on the surface, seem like they have little relevance to our own lives. By making personal connections to what we read, we can also delve deeper in to the Essential Questions.

Essential Questions
* Who am I?
* Where have I been?
* Where am I going?

Student Assignment
As we read through Woman Hollering Creek, you will need to complete a series of assignments to help you keep track of, explore, and make personal connections with the characters, themes, cultures, and events of the book. These will be helpful in creating your chapter for your memoir. You will do each of the following activities for each of the story sets, which are as follows:

1. ) Section I -- "My Lucy Friend...," p. 3–23 (7 stories)
2. ) Section II – "One Holy Night," p. 27-40 (2 stories)
3. ) Section III – "There was a man...," p. 44-84 (6 stories)
4. ) Section III – "There was a man...," p. 85-129 (2 stories)
5. ) Section III – "There was a man...," p. 130 – 165 (4 stories)

Each chapter set of activities includes the following:
* Triple entry quote journal (5 quote minimum)
* One-page paper about a story and how it relates to one of these memoir themes:
o Community/Friends/Group Membership
o Future/Purposes/Actions/Choices
o Family/Culture/Home
o Inner self/Outer Self/ Appearance
* Writing Journal
* 15-minute Spontaneous Monologue

Reading Process Project handout
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Author Reflections

At first students felt overwhelmed by both the amount of work and the tracking of the story it involved. We did a great deal of the first few chapter sets in class and highlighted exceptional student examples. This way students were supported in the work by having a time and a place to ask questions and work through frustrations. In addition, they saw examples of other exceptional work.