Living Up The Street

Use these activities to engage all types of learners, while requiring that they refer to and incorporate details from the text over the course of the activity. 

Activity 1: Writing like a Writer: Revising for Imagery and Descriptive Language

Review your personal/cultural/family money and labor biography. Find one memory or one moment that you can describe in extensive detail. Describe the memory with as much detail as possible; include an explanation of what you learned about money, wealth, and labor as a result of that memory. 

• Good descriptive writing speaks to as many of the five senses as possible. As a pre-writing activity, make a list of every detail you remember using the five senses as a guide. Then, see how many of those details you can fit into your final piece of writing.

Teaching Suggestion: Consider selecting one of Soto’s essays or another piece of descriptive writing as a model. Encourage students to use as many of the five senses as possible to complete their writing. Students may choose to explain the lesson from the memory at the beginning or end of the text. Encourage them to experiment with sequence, details, and figurative language.

Activity 2: Writing Like a Writer: Explanation by Omission