LESSON 1
Where Are You From?
The question that never has just one answer
Learning Objectives
- Analyze how an author uses specific details and structure to develop a personal narrative voice\nExamine how word choice and imagery convey emotional complexity and theme\nConnect texts to personal experience through reflective discussion\nDiscuss how identity resists simple categorization
Students examine why the question "Where are you from?" can feel simple or loaded depending on who is asking and who is answering. Through a personal narrative and a short poem, students explore how place, language, and ancestry shape identity in ways that cannot always be summed up in a single answer. This lesson invites students to begin mapping their own layered sense of home.
Texts
All the Places That Made Me
📝
After Reading
Summarize What You Read
Comprehension checkpoint — included on the text page above
What I Say When They Ask
📝
After Reading
Summarize What You Read
Comprehension checkpoint — included on the text page above
Key Vocabulary
📝 Vocabulary Worksheet
12 key terms — printable worksheet for students
Discussion Prompts
🗨 Discussion
The narrator describes a moment in class when Mrs. Okonkwo asks "Where are you from?" and the narrator says "It's complicated." Mrs. Okonkwo responds: "That's fine. We have time." Why is this response significant? How might a different answer from Mrs. Okonkwo have changed what the narrator was willing to share?
💬 Think-Pair-Share
The narrator says their identity is "layered" and gives three specific places as examples: the country on their parents' passports, the apartment that became a yoga studio, and the cast-iron pan in storage. Which of these feels most real or most important to the narrator, and how can you tell? Support your answer with specific language from the text.
🗨 Discussion
The story describes two kinds of movement: the parents' migration (leaving a country before the narrator was born) and the narrator's own eight months in Queens when the family lost their apartment. What does the narrator learn from each experience, and how are these lessons different?
💬 Think-Pair-Share
The poem "What I Say When They Ask" says the speaker is "not a single word. I am a sentence. A long one. With clauses." The story uses the word "layered." Both texts resist the idea of a single, simple identity. Which metaphor do you find more effective, and why?
Comprehension Questions
Hover over a question to see the teacher guide.
1
The narrator describes being "from" three different kinds of places: a physical neighborhood, a sensory/emotional memory place, and an ancestral country they've only visited twice. How does the narrator present each of these three kinds of places differently? Use specific details from the text.
Guide: The narrator presents (1) the physical neighborhood (Fulton Street, the bent stop sign) as lived experience and tangible permanence; (2) the grandmother's kitchen as sensory/emotional memory anchored in smell and feeling of safety; (3) the ancestral country as inherited and abstract, something they "carry" but have never fully lived. The difference is in how direct the experience is: the first is personal and present, the second is felt through family and sensory recall, the third is entirely carried through other people's memories and documents.
2
The narrator calls the cast-iron pan and the bent stop sign "the few things in my life with real permanence" in a passage about constant movement and loss. What makes these two objects significant, and how does the contrast between them reveal something important about how we define home?
Guide: Both the cast-iron pan and the bent stop sign represent permanence through physicality and small-scale, personal significance. The pan is a sensory anchor to family ritual and belonging; the stop sign is a neighborhood landmark that persists where everything else changes. Together they show that permanence is found in small, everyday, deeply personal things rather than in grand or official ways. The narrator's life is defined by movement (migration, displacement, apartments changing use), but these two objects prove that not everything leaves.
3
The narrator says they are "shaped indirectly by places I have never touched, the way a river is shaped by mountains it will never reach." What does this metaphor mean, and what is the narrator's point about how identity works? Do you find this comparison convincing?
Guide: The metaphor means: even without direct contact with a place, you can still be deeply influenced by it through culture, family stories, heritage, and inherited identity. The narrator's point is that identity is shaped by forces we don't choose or directly experience, the way a river's path is determined by geography it doesn't control. Students' assessments of whether the comparison is convincing will vary; the key is their reasoning about the relationship between experience, heritage, and identity.
4
Both texts end by suggesting that identity is something that takes time to explain. What does each ending say about how we should respond to the question Where are you from?, and what does this suggest about the nature of identity itself?
Guide: The story ends with Mrs. Okonkwo saying We have time and the narrator reflecting that the answer to Where are you from? is not a place. It is a story. The poem ends with Ask me again. I will tell you all of it. Both endings reject the single-answer framing of the question and instead suggest that identity requires space, listening, and the willingness to hear a long answer. The nature of identity implied is complex, layered, and not reducible to a place name or a single word.
Assessment Activity
My Roots Map
Print Activity →My Roots Map
*(Marzano's Taxonomy — Analysis)*
In this activity, you will create and analyze a visual map of the places — real and metaphorical — that have shaped who you are. Then you will analyze the patterns.
Step 1: Brainstorm (10 minutes)
On scratch paper, answer these questions quickly — write whatever comes to mind:
- Where were you born? Where did your parents and grandparents grow up?
- What place feels most like "home" to you, and why?
- Is there a place you've never been but still feel connected to?
- What smells, sounds, or foods make you think of a specific place or time?
- Have you ever had to leave a place that mattered to you?
Step 2: Create Your Map (20 minutes)
Draw a map shape in the center of your paper — it can be realistic (a country, city, neighborhood) or abstract (a web, a road, a web of roots). Add labeled branches, locations, or symbols for each place that has shaped your identity. Include at least 5 places — they don't all have to be places you've lived.
Step 3: Write and Analyze (15 minutes)
Below your map, write 4–6 sentences that begin *"I am from..."* — try to include:
- At least one place you have lived
- At least one place you carry without having visited
- At least one place that isn't on any atlas (a kitchen, a feeling, a specific memory)
Then write 2 sentences analyzing your own map: *What pattern do you notice? What does your map reveal about how identity is formed?*
Discussion: What surprised you about your own map? Did any place you included surprise you?
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*Teacher Note: Step 3 targets Marzano's Analysis level — students are not just listing but identifying patterns and drawing conclusions about what their own map reveals. Look for responses that move beyond simple listing to make a claim about identity.*
*(Marzano's Taxonomy — Analysis)*
In this activity, you will create and analyze a visual map of the places — real and metaphorical — that have shaped who you are. Then you will analyze the patterns.
Step 1: Brainstorm (10 minutes)
On scratch paper, answer these questions quickly — write whatever comes to mind:
- Where were you born? Where did your parents and grandparents grow up?
- What place feels most like "home" to you, and why?
- Is there a place you've never been but still feel connected to?
- What smells, sounds, or foods make you think of a specific place or time?
- Have you ever had to leave a place that mattered to you?
Step 2: Create Your Map (20 minutes)
Draw a map shape in the center of your paper — it can be realistic (a country, city, neighborhood) or abstract (a web, a road, a web of roots). Add labeled branches, locations, or symbols for each place that has shaped your identity. Include at least 5 places — they don't all have to be places you've lived.
Step 3: Write and Analyze (15 minutes)
Below your map, write 4–6 sentences that begin *"I am from..."* — try to include:
- At least one place you have lived
- At least one place you carry without having visited
- At least one place that isn't on any atlas (a kitchen, a feeling, a specific memory)
Then write 2 sentences analyzing your own map: *What pattern do you notice? What does your map reveal about how identity is formed?*
Discussion: What surprised you about your own map? Did any place you included surprise you?
---
*Teacher Note: Step 3 targets Marzano's Analysis level — students are not just listing but identifying patterns and drawing conclusions about what their own map reveals. Look for responses that move beyond simple listing to make a claim about identity.*
Recommended Anchor Texts
Extend the themes of this lesson with these recommended reads for Grade 6.
Refugee
Amal Unbound
Merci Suárez Changes Gears
When Stars Are Scattered
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