As society has changed rapidly in the last several decades, education continues to work hard to catch up and meet the demands of the modern world. One area, in particular, that has developed is communication. The advent and efficiency of the Internet and growth and affordability of cell phone technology have led to major shifts in how we exchange thoughts and ideas with one another. Young people today have adapted to sharing themselves in 280 characters or less, brief exchanges of abbreviations, and now through the use of photography. In order to meet the needs of today’s students, we must work to redesign writing instruction with the intent purpose to not only prepare, but introduce students, to the possibility and benefits of longer writing. As artificial intelligence continues to expand, it will be important for people to demonstrate the ability to form text independent of technology as a measure of one’s own capabilities.
To meet students where they are in their writing, it is important to identify what strategies work for them. One way students consistently access writing is through social media. As of 2024, 432 million people worldwide use SnapChat daily in addition to two billion people who post on Instagram at least once a month.1 Today’s communication includes more and more visuals. Considering how we can use visual images is critical to expanding students’ writing ability. In order to help ground students living in the modern digital world, we should bring them back into the physical world not just through visual material, but through the use of object study. This will allow students to access more hands-on learning experiences.
In developing literary instruction, I believe it is important to provide students not only written models generated by the instructor, but to utilize the work of acclaimed authors whose work will not only spark student interest, but inspire them. For this unit, I have chosen Sandra Cisneros’s coming-of-age novel The House on Mango Street. Set in an urban environment with a young person growing up and told through short vignettes, students in my classes tend to gravitate to this work as they find it accessible not only from a content perspective, but also from a structural perspective. While reading, students will examine how the author uses objects to provide an entry point into the world she has envisioned. In addition, students will examine the role material culture plays in developing symbolism in Cisneros’s work.
The House on Mango Street is written in the form of a series of vignettes. This short form will provide students the ability to examine descriptive writing, which is a significant component of vignettes. Throughout their reading, students will be provided the opportunity to stop and develop descriptive writing assignments based on the objects that they and the characters in the novel have encountered through the text. To do so, students will also be provided with a series of physical objects to choose from to inspire their writing. At the end of the unit, students will have the opportunity to develop one of their writing assignments into a longer, more polished piece in the form of an object biography. By providing this level of choice, it is my hope that all students will be able to access writing, no matter their level of literacy proficiency or confidence.
In my time working with middle school students, writing instruction has consistently been an underserved area in our curriculum, which is often reflected in the data on state testing. In fairness, writing instruction is difficult because it often involves a level of personal choice that is hard to measure with a rubric or a grading scale. In order to combat this, it is my hope that by expanding on the work that is already in our curriculum, I will be able to find ways to grow my students as writers.
In order to connect object study to our reading, students will be asked to design their own house on Mango Street at the end of the unit, utilizing the object Ssudy process they will be engaging throughout the unit. After completing their material representations of the text, they will examine their peers’ projects the same way they examined other materials throughout the course of the unit.
