Introduction and Overview

 This 9-week unit was designed for an 11th grade High School English course.  Throughout the unit, the class will read two novels, a poem, a short story, excerpts from other non-fiction pieces and a screenplay as well as listen to books on tape and watch some movie clips.  The main themes throughout this unit connecting all of the texts is identity formation and coming-of-age.  The two novels we will read are The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros.  In a typical 11th grade classroom, students are sixteen and seventeen years old.  This unit is relevant for these students because they are in the process of forming their identities and learning about who they are.       

We intend to teach students what makes up one’s identity and the experiences that form one’s identity by reading a variety of different literary works.  Furthermore, we hope to engage students by using such a variety of different texts.  For instance, The Kite Runner is a modern story that includes many powerful scenes that students can really learn from and challenge themselves with.  Then, The House on Mango Street, a very different novel, also has the same theme of identity formation, but is written in a completely different style and with a different tone.  By reading such a broad range of texts, it is our hope that we can tap into many students’ interests while teaching the necessary materials as well.  Throughout the unit, we will teach different reading and writing strategies as well by using these novels and the other supplementary texts.