Aim: How can the use of annotations aid in analyzing the figurative language, tone and conflict in “My Name,” by Sandra Ciseneros?
Do now: CLASS DISCUSSION
What does your name mean? If you don’t know, look it up. Do you feel any connection to this
meaning?
The Beginning
As you could’ve inferred from the “Do Now”, Ms. Peterson started the lesson by asking us what our names mean, and we all found out that we as a classroom have a lot of interesting information about the origins or meanings of our names. This was a more “literal” start to the class since we would be reading and annotating “My Name”, by Sandra Cisneros. She also asked if we felt connected to what our names supposedly meant, and the majority rule was yes, since a lot of people were named after good things. (We also wished Sophia a happy birthday). We then spoke a little about annotating, and then we proceeded to watch a video that gave us eleven tips to take into account when annotating. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w5Mz4nwciWc
Ms. Peterson then gave some methods of her own, like chunking, which means to group together more than one paragraph at a time when they have similar ideas, watching out for repetition of themes or ideas, and the POV (point of view) in the story. She then explained that annotating is note taking, and that highlighting and underlining wouldn’t be enough.
The Breakout Rooms and Continued Class Discussion
We then went into breakout rooms and spoke on a more thorough level about our names. We asked questions about why our parents named us what they did, who chose the name, if not our parents, if we were named after somebody, etc. A fair amount of the answers to these questions in my breakout room was “I don’t know”, which is fair, since a lot of people aren’t sure about the reason(s) why they were named what they were named. This was pretty crazy to think about, considering it’s our own names that we were talking about. We then rejoined the main room and spoke about the answers we got from our rooms to the questions we asked in them. The answers were very mixed and fascinating in their difference from each other.
The Reading, Annotating, and Answering
We then spirit read and annotated “My Name”, which is the first chapter in The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros.We were told to look out for the diction, tone, syntax, and figurative language, which she defined for us. Figurative language: Any use of language where the intended meaning differs from the actual literal meaning of the words themselves. There are many techniques which can rightly be called figurative language, including metaphor, simile, hyperbole, personification, onomatopoeia, verbal irony, and oxymoron. (Related: figure of speech). https://docs.google.com/file/d/1WQzjt1FWAXHJY0Xxr7xqNc0tYnzv1gZW/edit?usp=docslist_api&filetype=msword
The chapter describes a woman named Esperanza, who doesn’t like her name for many reasons. The main reason is that her great-grandmother, whom she was named after was forced into marriage and a sad life, and Esperanza wanted nothing to do with that. She hated the way it sounded when spoken, and it always had to be said fully, with no shortcuts or ways to escape the name. We were then sent into breakout rooms once again and discussed two fairly “deep” and relatively challenging questions: “How does Esperanza describe her name using figurative language? Refer to your annotations and cite some examples from the text.” and “What is Esperanza revealing to us about her feelings about herself, her life and her dreams for the future through the discussion of her name? How does she establish a conflict of identity?” (The “third” question is a part of the second one). We answered these questions in our breakout rooms as groups, and then we rejoined the main room to discuss these questions altogether. The answers were kind of similar, but many had things that no one saw, which is why we work separately in groups and then together.
The Story of Your Name
After our final discussion, Ms. Peterson told us that we would be doing something similar to Sandra Cisneros, which was writing about our names, except in the form of a paragraph.
Now it’s your turn to write about your name. Using the text as a model, write a paragraph about your name. You can try to mimic Cisneros’ style and voice. Think about the following questions as you write and be sure to include use of:
● What is your whole name?
● What does your name mean? Share what your name actually means and define
what it means to you by using figurative language.
● Are you named after someone? Who are they and how do you feel about them?
● What does your name remind you of?
● Does your name reflect who you are?
● Do you wish you had a different name/have you ever wanted to change your name?
The Reflection
We all answered these questions about our names and our identities, and then she concluded the class when we all submitted our documents. I have had a lot of experience with having a hard time annotating, but when explained in a simple enough way in class, I really understood how to annotate efficiently. This was a very interesting and introspective lesson, to say the least. We were all told to think about the origins of our names, which at first seems like a simple enough concept, but when we really thought about it, a lot of us were left with no answer until the internet “gave” us one. To me, this is a pretty shocking reality since you would expect to know why you are named what you are. This lesson got me to thinking about my own identity, about what I want to be associated with, and what my name means to me, which I think is a great way to strengthen character and find yourself. I really like lessons like these because they make you think not only about what is in the lesson, but what is also in your life that relates to the lesson. I love working together to reach a common goal, especially one as important as this. Realizing who you are is a challenge for many, and in class I learned that you control what your name means, not who named you nor the reason why. I really enjoyed this lesson, from the structure and its information to the “inner” lessons built within it.
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