When I Was Puerto Rican

When I Was Puerto Rican

by Esmeralda Santiago

Materials: Chapters-

"The American Invasion of Macun"

"Angels on the Ceiling"

"A Shot at It"

Overview:

In this project, you will select one chapter from the above chapters to read ,discuss and generate questions or topics for further personal research. You can do your research by interviews, visiting the World Wide Web and libraries etc. For the final product of this project, you'll write a mini-research paper or personal essay on the topic you have generated from reading the selections of Santiago's memoir. To complete the project, you will-

write journals to reflect on and respond to the literature you have read
generate a topic for your research from the selected literature
do research in the Internet
write a research paper or personal essay that reflect your understanding of the literature selection and your research topic.
learn to do citations
share our final paper in our Internet classroom. Go to nicenet.org, log in and join a new class using the key-
Class Name: Esmeralda Santiago
Your Class Key: O6Z764E39

Preparatory Activity:

1.What are you expecting to read and learn from a person's memoir?
Write your answer in a journal.

2.Share your journals in the class.

3.Skim the first two pages of each chapter and select one chapter to read based on your
personal interests and expectations.

4. Students who have selected the same chapter will be grouped together.

HW.

A. Read the selected chapter and write a journal that includes the following-

What have I learned from this chapter? (i.e. about the characters, the village, the town. the school, social and historic background of the story described in the chapter you read.)
What more do I want to know relating to the story( i.e. Who did other Puerto Ricans feel about becoming part of the common wealth of the United States? What was Brooklyn like in 1960-1970?)
Identify the themes or issues implied or described in the story.
Quotations and responses.
Any questions sprung from the story.
Select the most interesting parts of the story to read aloud in your group or class.

B. Circle the words, phrases or sentences that best convey the main ideas or themes of the story. Use a color highlighter to emphasize the words.

Activity 1

Circle the words, phrases or sentences that best convey the main idea or themes of the story. Do five- minute read-aloud of all the three chapters in turns in the class.
Go to small groups to share the journals. Read aloud your journals in turns. Help each other narrow down the topics for his/her research.
About selecting topics for research-

There is a close connection between the topic and the literature ( you'll need to refer to the literature you have read somewhere in your personal essay)
You really want to find more information about it (You need to be genuinely interested in the topic).
You'll be able to find information on the topic.

4. Share your questions ,topics and suggestions using the Internet Classroom.

5. (Teacher )Generate a list of the final research topics from the class.

6. Write the final topic on the top of your paper and respond in written words to the following-

How is the topic discussed in the literature you read? Describe it.
What is your personal reaction to the topic? Is there a personal story behind the reactions? Did the event take place in a special setting or background? What was happening in your community, town or the world when the event occurred?
What do your parents or family members say about the topic?
What did some of the well-known scholars, historians, critics, TV. or newspaper commentators say about the topic?
Are there any other literary works you have read that can provide you with insights to writing about the topic? What did the author say about your topic, explicit or implicit?

7. Based on the above exercise and other questions you have generated, determine what research you need to do online. List the questions you need to research on.

Activity 2

Begin your online research on the questions you have. While researching, you need to -

summarize or paraphrase the information you found
put any directly quoted statement in quotation marks
copy down the URLs of the web pages where you found the information( Read How to do citations)
gather the information you need using real ndex cards or electronic index cards. For example,

Topic: What was happening in my community, town or the world when the event occurred?

John Dole 's article in the New York Time, Sept. 18, 1984, states,"...................." (URL: www.nytimes.com/xxxxxx.html)

Here are the recommended search engines to use for your research-
www.infoseek.com ,
www.google.com ,
www.askjeeves.com,
www.yahoo.com.
www.altavista.com
www.excite.com
www.lycos.com
www.miningco.com(www.about.com)
www.webcrawler.com
www.galaxy.com
www.northenlight.com
www.looksmart.com
www.hotbot.com
www.thunderstone.com

We can also use the following muti-threaded or metasearch engines by asking specific questions-

Multi-Threaded
Highway 61
MetaCrawler
The Big Hub

Meta-Search
Ask Jeeves! - perform searches by asking questions
Dogpile
SavvySearch

Activity 3

Share our finished mini-research papers or personal essays in our Santiago Internet Classroom.

Post your finished writing in Documents.
Read and respond to your classmates paper.
Ask volunteers to read the best parts of their paper aloud in class.