Blended

Use this activity to engage all types of learners, while requiring that they refer to and incorporate details from the text over the course of the activity. 

ACTIVITY: “The Real You”

Who are you? Izzy’s journey toward discovering her identity begins with her English teacher’s homework assignment to write an essay entitled “The Real Me.” Izzy finds out the prompt is not so easy.

Take the challenge and write your own description of your identity. Consider all the different influences that make you who you are: family and friends, likes and dislikes, goals and dreams, hobbies and interests, skills and challenges, experiences and travels.

• Your written product can be a composition of several paragraphs; a word cloud of phrases and ideas, in which the size of the words reflects the importance of the idea; or a collage of images (hand-drawn or electronically cut and pasted) with captions.
• Select a few ideas that you feel most strongly identify you to share with peers as time allows.

Teaching Suggestion: Students might benefit from a return to Chapter 10 (Izzy’s essay, “The Real Me”). Read her essay aloud; allow students to point out its strengths and focus, and to comment on her style and tone as a writer. Assure them that their compositions can adopt Izzy’s colloquial style, and that sharing is optional.

Paired Text Extension:

Read Rita Dove’s brief poem, “Fifth Grade Autobiography,” about a memory of family members.

• What do you think the poem reveals about the speaker’s identity? What details help you to envision the scene and the speaker’s role in it? How do one’s family members and family relationships help to shape one’s identity?
• Write a brief blank verse poem about a memory you have that includes family and shows some facet of your identity.

Teaching Suggestion: Students might be encouraged to begin with a simple list of sensory images that detail the scene of the memory. Students can connect Dove’s poem and their own original work to the novel through the shared themes of Identity and The Dynamics of Family.