This unit is created to support four 90 minute classes over the course of six weeks in A/B block scheduling. Due to the flipped classroom structure, it is expected that students will work on this unit inside and outside of the classroom.
Lesson 1: Anticipation Guide and Background (Theme, Day 1)
Materials:
Time: 90 minutes
Classroom Set-Up: Students could work in rows, however, in my personal classroom set-up, students are in groups of six. Students may modify seating to work with pairs as they see necessary.
| Vocabulary to Know for Anticipation Guide
– assimilate: absorb and integrate (people, ideas, or culture) into a wider society or culture.
– priority: a thing that is regarded as more important than another.
– dynamic: characterized by constant change, activity, or progress |
Anticipation Guide: Read the following statements and check the box if you agree or disagree with the statement.
| Statement |
Agree |
Disagree |
| Your name defines who you are. |
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| It is possible to fully assimilate into another culture. |
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| Family and cultural tradition should take priority over individual needs. |
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| Identity is dynamic and changes often throughout one’s life. |
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| Writing Response: In five to ten sentences, explain your rationale for the choices in the statements above.
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| Post-Anticipation Guide Reflection: You are going to listen to Gil Scott Heron’s “Home is Where the Hatred Is”[1].
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| Lyrics |
Questions: |
| A junkie walking through the twilight
I’m on my way home
I left three days ago, but no one seems to know I’m gone
Home is where the hatred is
Home is filled with pain and it,
Might not be such a bad idea if I never, never went home again
Stand as far away from me as you can and ask me why
Hang on to your rosary beads
Close your eyes to watch me die
You keep saying, kick it, quit it, kick it, quit it
God, but did you ever try
To turn your sick soul inside out
So that the world, so that the world
Can watch you die
Home is where I live inside my white powder dreams
Home was once an empty vacuum that’s filled now with my silent screams
Home is where the needle marks
Try to heal my broken heart
And it might not be such a bad idea if I never, if I never went home again
Home again
Home again
Home again
Kick it, quit it
Kick it, quit it
Kick it, quit it
Kick it, can’t go home again |
- Annotate critical literary devices present in this poem. List two examples below.
- List three adjectives that define the tone of this poem. Write them below.
- How does this poem tie into the themes present in the Anticipation Guide for the Namesake?
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| Writing Prompt: How does Heron’s feeling of home connect with you? How does it differ? How does home and setting shape the expectations of a protagonist?
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Lesson 2: Background Information Jigsaw (Immigration, Assimilation, and Soviet Literature, Day 2)
| OBJ: I can demonstrate engagement of major themes in The Namesake IOT provide background information BY completing a jigsaw
STANDARDS: RL.11-12.1, RL.11-12.6, W.11-12.3 |
Materials:
Time: 90 minutes
Classroom Set-Up: Students could work in rows, however, in my personal classroom set-up, students are in groups of six. Students may modify seating to work with pairs as they see necessary.
Directions: Use the links below to research your topic. The links are a starting point for research; you may choose additional sources of information. Read each resource. Identify key information about the topic and make at least five relevant connections and at least three questions that you want to explore in The Namesake.
Guided Instruction: Jigsaw (Informational Articles)
Directions: Work in groups in order to complete the worksheet provided in your station. Everyone is expected to annotate the article, identify key vocabulary words in the article (on the sticky note) and to then transfer the notes in the bolded box on chart paper. You will share your results with the class.
My Name:
Group Name:
STEP ONE: Take notes on your own article. Become an expert!
| Title & Author:
Main Problem:
The main problem in the article is….
Main Solution:
The author’s main solution in the article is…
Evidence (Summarize three key details in the article):
Key Quote:
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- Describe what you learned about the author and their point of view on the issue described in the article.
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- Think backwards. What question do you imagine that the author was trying to answer by writing this article?
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STEP THREE: Reflection
Two new learnings:
One question you still have about this topic:
STEP TWO: In each of these boxes, please take notes on what you learn from your Teaching Group. Please label the boxes with the title and author of the article:
| Exit Ticket: Jhumpa Lahiri describes the immigrant experience as allowing her to see a window into the condition of the human soul. After watching the video, what do you think she means by this? How might the immigrant experience take a toll on one’s life?[2] What challenges do immigrants face? Please answer the questions in five to ten sentences.
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Lesson 3: “The Overcoat” and “The Work You Do, The Person You Are”
Materials:
- Powerpoint Presentation
- Postcards
- Envelopes
- Pens and colored pencils
Time: 90 minutes
Classroom Set-Up: Students could work in rows, however, in my personal classroom set-up, students are in groups of six. Students may modify seating to work with pairs as they see necessary.
Do Now (Part I): Write down two adjectives that describe the character traits of the following characters.
| Character |
Description |
| Petrovich |
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| Akakiy |
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| The Important Person |
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| The Assistant Head Clerk |
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| The Prominent Personage |
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Close Reading Excerpt: Read the following excerpt of the short story. Highlight imagery and hyperbole, underline personification, circle metaphors and similes. Then answer the questions that follow.
| To tell the truth, it was a little hard for him at first to accustom himself to these deprivations; but he got used to them at length, after a fashion, and all went smoothly. He even got used to being hungry in the evening, but he made up for it by treating himself, so to say, in spirit, by bearing ever in mind the idea of his future cloak. From that time forth his existence seemed to become, in some way, fuller, as if he were married, or as if some other man lived in him, as if, in fact, he were not alone, and some pleasant friend had consented to travel along life’s path with him, the friend being no other than the cloak, with thick wadding and a strong lining incapable of wearing out. He became more lively, and even his character grew firmer, like that of a man who has made up his mind, and set himself a goal. From his face and gait, doubt and indecision, all hesitating and wavering traits disappeared of themselves. Fire gleamed in his eyes, and occasionally the boldest and most daring ideas flitted through his mind; why not, for instance, have marten fur on the collar? The thought of this almost made him absent-minded. Once, in copying a letter, he nearly made a mistake, so that he exclaimed almost aloud, “Ugh!” and crossed himself. Once, in the course of every month, he had a conference with Petrovitch on the subject of the cloak, where it would be better to buy the cloth, and the colour, and the price. He always returned home satisfied, though troubled, reflecting that the time would come at last when it could all be bought, and then the cloak made. |
Journal Entry: In The Namesake, the protagonist goes through many transformations to reconcile his identity. In “The Overcoat,” the new garment gave the protagonist a new sense of power. In 8-10 sentences, make a prediction about what strengthens the resolve of the protagonist in the novel, and how that may develop the theme of transformation.
Extension (Postcard Activity):
- Read “The Work You Do, The Person You Are” by Toni Morrison. Write down three points of advice to Akakiy based on the advice that Toni’s father gave to her.
- Compare the advice that you received with another partner. Between you and your partner, choose your favorite three.
- Write your top three advice points on a postcard and put it in an envelope. Leave it on your desk.
- Students will walk around the room and read the postcards created.
Lesson 4: Chapter 7 of The Namesake and “A List of My Own Deaths”
Materials:
Time: 90 minutes
Classroom Set-Up: Students could work in rows, however, in my personal classroom set-up, students are in groups of six. Students may modify seating to work with pairs as they see necessary.
Do Now (Character Sketch): You will review your notes about Ashoke. Feel free to use your copy of The Namesake in order to complete these frames.
- What I find most important about Ashoke is…
- You can see this when he…
- Another trait the reader can see is how he is________. This is most obvious when__________.
- One final important thing about Ashoke is_____. You can see this when the character is ________.
- What I’ll remember most about Ashoke is_________________.
Close Reading Excerpt: Read the following excerpt of Chapter 7 of The Namesake. Highlight figurative language, underline representations of Bengali culture, circle representations of American culture. Then answer the questions that follow.
| For ten days following his father’s death, he and his mother and Sonia eat a mourner’s diet, forgoing meat and fish. They eat only rice and dal and vegetables, plainly prepared. Gogol remembers having to do the same thing when he was younger, when his grandparents died, his mother yelling at him when he forgot one day and had a hamburger at school. He remembers, back then, being bored by it, annoyed at having to observe a ritual no one else he knew followed, in honor of people he had seen only a few times in his life. He remembers his father sitting unshaven on a chair, staring through them, speaking to no one. He remembers those meals eaten in complete silence, the television turned off. Now, sitting together at the kitchen table at six-thirty every evening, the hour feeling more like midnight through the window, his father’s chair empty, this meatless meal is the only thing that seems to make sense. There is no question of skipping this meal; on the contrary, for ten evenings the three of them are strangely hungry, eager to taste the blandness on their plates. It is the one thing that structures their days: the sound of the food being warmed in the microwave, three plates lowered from the cupboard, three glasses filled. The rest of it—the calls, the flowers that are everywhere, the visitors, the hours they spend sitting together in the living room unable to say a word, mean nothing. Without articulating it to one another, they draw comfort from the fact that it is the only time in the day that they are alone, isolated, as a family; even if there are visitors lingering in the house, only the three of them partake of this meal. And only for its duration is their grief slightly abated, the enforced absence of certain foods on their plates conjuring his father’s presence somehow. |
Part II: “A List of My Own Deaths” by Dmitri Prigov
Directions: Please read the provided poem below and answer the questions on the right hand side.
| Text |
Questions: |
| I might have died at age 1 from chickenpox, but didn’t
At 2 I might have died from measles
At 3 I might have died from lupus, hunger and war
In my 4th year I could have died from measles, many did
Oh, and at 6 months I could have died from dyspepsia
I also might have died before my birth, from the unspeakable difficulties of life to come
I could have died while being born, these things happen
I could have died at 5 from scarlet fever — a terrible thing
At 6, 7, 8 and 9 I could have died from polio
At 10 I could have died from fear — it was very scary
At 11 and 12 I could have died of boredom at school, but I overcame it
At 13 and 14 I could have died while crossing the street, in someone else’s garden stealing apples or in a courtyard fight — those were brutal fights
At 15, I could have died from encephalitis from a tick bite in a forest outside Moscow
At 16, I could have just died
I could have just died at 17
I could have just died at 18
I could have died at 19 or 20 when bathing in the Black or Baltic Sea
At 24, I could have died from the police
At 25 years I could have died from food poisoning
I could have died at the ages of 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, or 41 in prisons, camps, from torture, on a prisoners’ bunk, during interrogations, in the logging camps, on a criminal’s knife, at the North Pole, eaten up by gnats, in the desert, on a cross, thrust under the ice, thrown into the furnace, on the wheel, from a bullet, in a dungeon, in manacles, from exhaustion in the cattle wagon, in a gas chamber, thrown from a cliff, doused in acid, from scurvy, without making it to the location of my second prison term, of a heart attack in front of the camp gates flung open in the days of rehabilitation
At 41 I could have also died from a twisted intestine
Or, at 40, for example, if I hadn’t died before that in prison, I could have died from being bitten by a rabid dog — they were running around Moscow in those days
And at 39 I might have died from malaria in Asia
But at age 42 I could already die of tuberculosis
I could have died at 43 from a traumatic head injury, for example, from a blow with an ax
I could have died at 44, 45 and 46 from something or other, literally just some nonsense
I could have died at 47 from serious worries
I could have died at 48 from a possible cancer
At 49, 50, 51 I could have died from a heart attack, and indeed died, but I snapped out of it
At 52 I could still die from a heart attack
At 53 I could die from anything, for example, from an irregular life
I could have died at 54 just about anything
I could have died at 55 from anything
I could have died at 56 from anything
I could have died at 57 from anything
I could have died at 58 from anything
And at my present 59 years I could die from anything, for example from these compositions
And in all the years, times and sentences to come, I can, can, can die, die, die from what, from what, from what? — from just about anything |
- List three adjectives that define the tone of this poem. Write them below.
- What do you think is the purpose of the author repeating “I could’ve died” multiple times? What is the literary device being used? How does it define the theme of the poem?
- In the poem, the author mentions a lot of different diseases that he could have died from. What do you think is the role of sickness in the poem? How does it define the mood of the poem?
- This is a “catalogue poem” which is a poem that is defined by the listing of items, people, places, or ideas. There are many ages in the poem that are not defined by a cause of death or a “meaningful” death. Do you think that this makes the poem better or worse? Explain why in three to five sentences below.
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| Writing Prompt: You will reflect on the relationship between Ashoke and Gogol in the novel thus far. You will write a catalogue poem based on the milestones in Gogol’s life based on his relationship with his father. You are to use at least three of the five literary devices in your poem in order to complete the assignment. The poem must be at least 20-35 lines. You are to write this poem on a separate sheet of paper.
- Repetition
- Rhyme
- Metaphor
- Symbolism
- Imagery
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[1] “Gil Scott-Heron – Home Is Where the Hatred Is (Official Audio).” YouTube, 19 August 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSpBs1ghyoo. Accessed 1 May 2025.
[2] National Geographic. “After Decades of Brownface, South Asians Fight for Better Representation.” YouTube, YouTube, 7 October 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vcz2IQaKz3M&t=125s. Accessed 21 June 2025.
