Aim: How can the use of annotations aid in analyzing the figurative language, tone and conflict in “My Name,” by Sandra Ciseneros?
Do Now: What does your name mean? If you don’t know, look it up. Do you feel any connection to this meaning?
We began a class discussion about our names. Everyone has a name and behind that name, there’s a specific meaning behind the word. Whether there’s a complex meaning or simple meaning, all names are different and unique in their own way. We were given some time to dig deeper into the meanings of our names. When we began our class discussion, we talked about what our names meant and whether there was a connection between us and our name.
Some classmates shared out:
(Tempestt)His name means a violent windy storm. The only connection that he has with his name is that it has nothing to do with his personality because he is normally relatively calm.
(Oscar) Oscar means “warrior,” and he feels that it fits his personality because he is a person who has his own ideas.
(Eric) When he looked his name up, his name means “eternal ruler,” he doesn’t feel the connection because a ruler is supposed to be a leader and should be professional, but he feels that sometimes he could be very violent.
(Loezee) Loezee couldn’t find a definition for her name so she found the meaning of the letters in her name instead. She found that L means thoughtful and O means passionate and a little selfish. She felt that this didn’t connect to her at all.
(Bernice) Bernice means “victory bringer” and she doesn’t feel that she has any connection to her, she doesn’t feel that she achieved anything victorious.
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Annotating- Purpose and Techniques
Annotating isn’t just an English skill. Annotating is a very important skill that we’ll use throughout our entire lives. For instance, when we are adults, we’ll have to repeatedly go through mortgage documents and other documents when we have to purchase our own homes. We annotate a lot more than we realize, which makes it really significant.
In class we watched a video called “How to annotate text while reading,” this video really helped to deepen my understanding of how annotating works.
Here’s the link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5Mz4nwciWc
After watching the video, the class gained a better understanding of the different ways we can annotate and what some benefits of annotating are. We learned that annotating means to take notes on a text we are reading and the notes we take should represent our thoughts. We annotate to get a deeper understanding of what we’re reading. For example, when you annotate, it helps you to process every little detail that you are reading so you could then comprehend the text better. Some annotating techniques are to circle unknown words, use question marks to mark which part of the text that you are uncertain about, and you could use stars to point out anything important. You could also highlight according to a color coded system as a way to annotate. Annotating isn’t a waste of time, since it could really help you break apart a text for your own understanding.
Discussion: Further Techniques
Chunking--Summarizing (You use this technique by putting down a few words on the side margin after reading a section of the text to summarize a portion of the text )
Common Themes or repetition of ideas (When you read through works of literature, some themes will repeat itself, so by keeping track of when an event or phrase is repeating, you could go back and pull out the information instead of looking through the whole text to find details.)
POV (Point of view; when you're reading, you’re going to encounter several different points of views of opinions and thoughts, so this technique is putting brackets around areas that you think are the author's point of view.)
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Team Discussion:
Do you know why your parents chose your name? Who chose it? Were you named after a particular person? Why were you named after him or her?
In this discussion, we were put into our groups to discuss why we have the name we have. This discussion was very interesting since we got to better understand someone and their background.
Some interesting responses I heard from the Team Discussion:
(Mohamed) His parents are religious so they decided to name him after the prophet Muhammad.
(Tempestt) His mom wanted a unique name for him, so they went with Tempestt. His mom also didn’t want him to have the same name as his dad, so his mom chose Tempestt.
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"My Name" by Sandra Cisneros
Let’s read “My Name”, the first chapter in the book, The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. Annotate the story while reading and pay attention to the following: figurative language, diction, syntax, tone, anything else that stands out to you etc.
We took turns spirit reading the article and we had to annotate figurative language and quotes that stood out to us. I highlighted quotes that I thought would help me for the upcoming group work. As shown below, this is a copy of my annotations of “My Name” by Sandra Cisneros.
The short reading talked about a girl named “Esperanza,” who didn’t like her name at all. Esperanza compared her name to bad things like the number nine and a muddy color. She thought that her name was bad luck. Additionally, Esperanza didn’t like her name because of her great-grandmother. Her great-grandmother lived a pretty depressing life staring out the window, and Esperanza quoted “I have inherited her name, but I don’t want to inherit her place by the window.” Esperanza would do anything for her name to change.
*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).
Together me and my group worked together to complete the questions below.
How does Esperanza describe her name using figurative language? Refer to your annotations and cite some examples from the text.
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?
After discussing with my peers, we came up with:
When we got into the breakout rooms, my group members listed out all the figurative language that we spotted in the article. Then we discussed what the figurative language means and how she applies it to her name.
For the second question, we shared out what ideas we had in mind for the question and we added on to each other’s ideas as we were answering the question. Mohamed started off by sharing that Esperanza isn’t confident in her name and she thinks it's a bad name because of all the bad things she compares it to. Then Tempestt adds on by saying that she doesn’t want to inherit her great-grandmother's life as her future. Alma also brought up that Esperanza wanted to change her name, which shows the hatred she has towards her own name. We all agreed with their ideas and I concluded that she establishes a conflict of identity because she won’t accept her name and she claims that it doesn’t match her at all.
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Individual Activity:
After the group work, we worked on our individual activity. For the individual activity, we had to refer back to the aim and continue to add on to what’s our name and what it means. We also had to answer questions more in-depth about our names.
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?
My whole name is Sophia Cheng. Sophia originated from Greece and it means “wisdom.” Sophia is like a very nice name that sounds like a very soothing song when said. But it is like a song I hear everywhere I go because of how common it is. To me, I see the name as someone who is a hard worker and always thrive to survive. I’m not named after anyone, my parents thought it was a very nice sounding name, but they didn’t realize how common it was until after I was born. My name reminds me of a fashion designer brand; and I feel that my name doesn’t really reflect who I am because I feel that I’m not wise and I don’t have enough experience in life to have wisdom. Sometimes I wished I had a different name because my name is like the most common name ever. I hear it everywhere I go. My name is never unique because I share it with so many other people. I have wanted to change my name because it is very ordinary, but other than how common it is, I really like this name.
Reflection:
What did I learn?
Why did I learn it?
How will I use what I learned?
Generally speaking, I acquired a lot of new knowledge after this lesson. This lesson experience taught me that annotating is a lot more important than I thought. I never realized that we use annotation in our daily lives or we’ll need it in our future lives, whether we take notes on an article we see online or make comments on an article, we are annotating. Annotating can be very beneficial for you. I always felt that annotating was a waste of my time because it slows down the process of me finishing my work, but now I realized that annotating could help me understand a text more and instead of slowing me down, it could help save time. I always knew that annotating could help you find things easier, but I still thought that taking the time to write things in the margins was pointless, this lesson changed my mind because now referring back to a part of a text will be much simpler instead of overwhelming yourself while you try to find a specific quote. When you annotate, it makes you more focused on the text and it could help us get a deeper understanding of different parts of the text. I learned to annotate because annotating will be very useful in both the present day and in the future days. Annotating isn’t just an english skill, it’s a skill that I’ll apply throughout my life. I also learned more about annotating so I’ll be able to excel my understanding on different texts. Annotation is very important and because of its importance, learning it will only benefit us.
In this lesson, I was also introduced to many different annotation techniques.There were some techniques that I was familiar with and there were new ones that I learned. Usually when I annotate, I only highlight and underline words or phrases that stood out to me or seemed important. After learning more about the different types of techniques, I want to apply these techniques on future articles. For instance, putting a star next to an important part of a text was a very interesting way to indicate that something is significant, instead of highlighting or underlining, I found a new way to help me annotate important parts of a text. Many of these techniques could help me break the text down in different ways so in the future, I’ll use what I learned by applying these techniques on future articles. Chunking-summarizing is also a technique that I just learned and it could help me summarize small portions of a text. There are several more techniques that I learned today, but since you only get better at annotating the more you do it, I’ll have more opportunities to try several other techniques to help improve my annotating skills.
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