An Island Like You

An Island Like You

The purpose of my unit covering the book An Island Like you is to allow students of all backgrounds understand that their heritage and ethnicity matter not only to them, but those that they are surrounded by on a daily basis.
By reading An Island Like you students will learn to understand how living with different cultural backgrounds define the person that you are, and that where you come from does not necessarily guide where you will go. Understanding that everyone is different will enable students to learn about those differences in a safe and comfortable environment.
When talking about the different stories from the book, students will be able to address similar situation in their own lives and come to sympathize with a culture that is not necessarily their own, but one that contains the same problems as their own culture does.
I would certainly incorporate The House on Mango Street in this unit as a supplementary source. Mango Street has the same great qualities as Island. Any student will be able to adjust and incorporate their stories to fit either book.
Themes such as hope, trust, identity, poverty, and friendship are just a few that will be covered in this unit using these two books. Approaching this unit with a cultural studies perspective will allow for a wide variety of topics to be covered.
This unit is specifically set up for 9-12 grade students in a cultural studies based English course. Students will be expected to journal, blog, or write ‘something’ everyday. Writing will be a key aspect to this unit.
As an end assessment, students will develop a presentation to the class that will incorporate their own heritage and cultural background along with correlations from ‘Island’ and ‘Mango Street’.
This unit will last for two weeks with mini assessments and group assignments during those two weeks, culminating in the end project.