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Goal
To develop writing and publishing skills
Objective
Learners will use the features of a word processor to develop creative pieces
about their names, incorporating both text and graphic elements
Skills
Using a word processor as a creative tool; inserting a picture into a word
processing program; reading and writing practice; class discussion; exploring
personal and family history.
Prerequisite skills
Basic word processing skills, manipulating fonts. The more learners are able to
do with the word processing software, the more creative they can be with this
project.
Time
About 2.5 hours
Related Activities
Make a Newsletter (columns, graphics and section breaks)
Instructor’s Note
Our classes enjoy creating graphics of their names—some students did acrostics,
some used tables to lay out the information, others used Word Art to design
their names and wrote several paragraphs underneath, and some brought in clip
art to illustrate their writing.
Activity
Read the excerpt from The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros entitled “My Name” as a group, away from the computers.
Spend some time discussing the reading.
Ask the participants to write a composition based on the following:
The reasons why you were given your name
The root or meaning of your name
Any nicknames you may have
Do you have a namesake?
Are there famous people who share your name
If your name was originally from a language other than English, has it changed in this country?
Do you have a “real name” you don’t use or only use sometimes?
Do you like your name?
Include any other relevant details
Encourage the students to take their time and develop several paragraphs about their names. This writing will provide them with the basis for their creative pieces.
In creating the final piece, students can work with font size and face, color, Word Art and/or clip art.
Follow-up
Activity
We made an exhibition - “Our Names” - from the work learners produced for this
exercise. Their pieces incorporated memories, family history and cultural
knowledge.
This activity is based on an exercise from the “Windows to Writing” curriculum
by the Consortium for Workers’ Education. Used by permission.
(please feel free to substitute this reading with your own)
“My Name” excerpt from The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros:
In English my name means hope. In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting. It is like the number nine. A muddy color. It is the Mexican records my father plays on Sunday mornings when he is shaving, songs like sobbing. It was my great-grandmother's name and now it is mine. She was horse woman, too, born like me in the Chinese year of the horse - which is supposed to be bad luck if you're born female, but I think this is a Chinese lie because the Chinese, like the Mexicans, don't like their women strong. My great-grandmother. I would've liked to have known her, a wild horse of a woman, so wild she wouldn't marry. Until my great-grandfather threw a sack over her head and carried her off. Just like that, as if she were a fancy chandelier. That's the way he did it. And the story goes she never forgave him. She looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow. I wonder if she made the best with what she got or was she sorry because she couldn't be all the things she wanted to be. Esperanza. I have inherited her name, but I don't want to inherit her place by the window.
At school they say my name funny as if the syllables were made out of tin and hurt the roof of your mouth. But in Spanish my name is made out of a softer something, like silver, not quite as thick as my sister's name - Magdalena - which is uglier than mine. Magdalena who at least can come home and become Nenny. But I am always Esperanza.
I would like to baptize myself under a new name, a name more like the real me, the one nobody sees. Esperanza or Lisandra or Maritza or Zeze the X. Yes. Something like Zeze the X will do.