Potomac's eighth grade English students read and discuss The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. The book is a series of short vignettes that together capture the characters, setting, and stories of a particular neighborhood in Chicago. The vignettes are written from the perspective of a fictional narrator and are based loosely on Cisneros's own experiences as well as those of her students. Some of the vignettes are humorous or action-packed; some are heart-wrenching or shocking. All are deliberate in their use of figurative language, poetic elements, grammar conventions, and pacing.Each eighth grader composed at least one vignette for inclusion in this digital collection. They wrote in the style of Sandra Cisneros, as they interpreted it based on their notes and our class discussions, yet they set it in a time and place of their own choosing. While some of these vignettes are based on the author's personal experience, many of them are purely fiction, an imagining of characters and circumstances that seemed ripe for this assignment. Students also used this assignment to experiment with new vocabulary words and techniques involving punctuation and sentence structure.We encourage you to leave comments below vignettes that strike you in some way. Please keep your comments positive and specific; this is not the place for critiques or suggestions. Enjoy the creativity and vibrancy of these students' literary efforts.
My Neighborhood
I’ve lived there my whole life, except for the last 3 years. Three years ago I moved houses, switched neighborhoods and changed schools. Every weekday before I moved I woke, took a shower, ate breakfast and went to wait for the bus. I waited for the bus and talked to about twenty other kids that had the same routine as me. It was hard leaving it all behind. Playing tag in kindergarten or playing catch when I was little older. I remember one wet day in kindergarten we were playing tag and I slipped. I got up crying so hard I couldn’t see and found out later that day that I had chipped my tooth. That was the first time I chipped my tooth. The second was in first grade on the playground. I chipped the same tooth in the same place. My chipped tooth didn’t stop me from trick-or-treating later that month though. My big neighborhood made trick-or-treating easy and accessible. My neighborhood friends, and my out of neighborhood friends would always come trick-or-treating with me. Having those neighborhood friends was the best part, being able to walk to someones house and hang out for the day. I haven’t seen them for three years, but I’m adjusting. I’ve made new friends and now live in a new house, but that house was my first and only home for eleven years and I will always remember it.
~ Bryce K.
You deserve an award for powering through a chipped tooth to go trick or treating. He has my vote for tricker treater of the year. #TTOTY
ReplyDeleteI like the nostalgic feel to this vignett
ReplyDeleteI like the way you tell about your tooth-chipping experience. Must have been traumatic.
ReplyDeleteStay away from wet kindergartners
ReplyDelete