Common Core Standards
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Gender Roles in Pears on a Willow
Tree
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Book: Pears on a Willow Tree
Author: Leslie Pietrzyk
Grade Level: 9-12
Lesson Type: Character Development
Concept: Character Development
Primary Subject Area: English
Secondary Subject Areas: N/A
Common Core Standards Addressed:
Grades 9-10
Grades 11-12
Vocabulary Acquisition and Use
Vocabulary Acquisition and Use
o Acquire and use accurately general
academic and domain-specific words and
phrases, sufficient for reading, writing,
speaking, and listening at the college and
career readiness level; demonstrate
independence in gathering vocabulary
knowledge when considering a word or
phrase important to comprehension or
expression.
o Acquire and use accurately general
academic and domain-specific words and
phrases, sufficient for reading, writing,
speaking, and listening at the college and
career readiness level; demonstrate
independence in gathering vocabulary
knowledge when considering a word or
phrase important to comprehension or
expression.
Craft and Structure
Craft and Structure
o Analyze how an author’s choices
concerning how to structure a text, order
events within it (e.g., parallel plots), and
manipulate time (e.g., pacing, flashbacks)
create such effects as mystery, tension, or
surprise.
o Determine the meaning of words and
phrases as they are used in the text,
including figurative and connotative
meanings; analyze the cumulative impact
of specific word choices on meaning and
tone (e.g., how the language evokes a sense
of time and place; how it sets a formal or
informal tone).
o Analyze a case in which grasping a point
of view requires distinguishing what is
directly stated in a text from what is really
meant (e.g., satire, sarcasm, irony, or
understatement).
o Analyze how an author’s choices
concerning how to structure specific parts
of a text (e.g., the choice of where to begin
or end a story, the choice to provide a
comedic or tragic resolution) contribute to
its overall structure and meaning as well as
its aesthetic impact.
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Pears on a Willow Tree:: Common Core Standards
1
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Lesson Plan
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Gender Roles in Pears on a Willow
Tree
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Book: Pears on a Willow Tree
Author: Leslie Pietrzyk
Grade Level: 9-12
Lesson Type: Character Development
Overview:
This lesson will introduce students to interpretation of the motherdaughter dynamic that Pietrzyk focuses on within Pears on a Willow
Tree, identifying the gender roles that each generation of women
ascribes to.
Objectives:
Students will be able to:
• Identify gender roles and expectations of daughters in the
Marchewka family.
• Understand how the novel operates around only women and
explain why Pietrzyk chose this structure.
• Debate whether Ginger achieves the differences that she wants
in the mother-daughter dynamic.
• Delve into authorial choices in characterizing the women in
terms of one another.
Materials:
•
Copies of Pears on a
Willow Tree
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Whiteboard/
Chalkboard
•
Projector
Other Resources:
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Key Vocabulary Terms
•
General/Comprehensio
n Questions
•
Text References
•
Supplemental
Materials Chart
Warm-Up Activity:
• Ask students to respond to the following quotation, including
personal support, textual support, or ideas pulled from other
texts. Do they agree or disagree with this statement?
o “The men are wrong, I think, to want so much the boys
when it is the girls who keep the family alive” (14).
• Lead a debate between those who agree and those who don’t.
Ensure that all students are heard but make sure that students
are answering both generally and in terms of whether this
statement is true of the Marchewka family.
Short Lecture & Partner Activities:
• Provide a brief description of characterization techniques and
then identify some in Pietrzyk’s work, including but not limited
to:
o Dialogue, particularly that between women. Some useful
passages are found on 18-21, 40-43, 52-56
o Character exposure through letters. Some useful passages
are found on 9-17 (“Stories from America”), and 222-236
(“Best Friends”)
Pears on a Willow Tree: Lesson Plan
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Lesson Plan
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Gender Roles in Pears on a Willow
Tree
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Book: Pears on a Willow Tree
Author: Leslie Pietrzyk
Grade Level: 9-12
Lesson Type: Character Development
o Point of view, particularly when chapters are split
between the perspectives of individuals in “Wedding
Day,” or when entire chapters focus on a specific
character, such as “”The Wanting-To-Be-An-Artist
Summer” and “Things Women Know.”
Open up a discussion on the gender of Pietryzk’s characters.
How is her characterization specific to women? Ask for textual
examples of when and how female characters are built based off
of their interactions with one another and with (or in the absence
of) men.
o Some questions to focus this discussion on include: Why
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are men never present in the kitchen? Using the conversation
between women from pages 4-7, what are some of the
responsibilities of the woman, according to Rose? Why does
Pietrzyk start her novel with this conversation? Address the
relationship between Ginger and her husband. Why is he
always described in terms of Ginger? Why does Helen refuse to
tell the rest of the family about the divorce? What does that say
about the expectations of the roles and responsibilities of a
woman in the Marchewka family?
Discussion Wrap-Up:
•
Ask students to think about women in the last few decades. Have them reflect on how the
Marchewka women have changed through the generations in correlation to feminist
movements or simply a decline in sexism, depending on background knowledge.
Pears on a Willow Tree: Lesson Plan
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Lesson Plan
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Gender Roles in Pears on a Willow
Tree
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Book: Pears on a Willow Tree
Author: Leslie Pietrzyk
Grade Level: 9-12
Lesson Type: Character Development
Writing Activities/Evaluations:
Analytical: Analyze Ginger’s divorce. What does this do to her characterization to have lost the
man in her life? What does this do to her relationship with her mother and other female
relations?
Creative: Choose a passage in the novel and write it from the point of view of male characters.
Include what the characters think and say, and how they respond to female influence.
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Pears on a Willow Tree: Lesson Plan
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Discussion & Comprehension Questions
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Gender Roles in Pears on a Willow
Tree
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Book: Pears on a Willow Tree
Author: Leslie Pietrzyk
Grade Level: 9-12
Lesson Type: Character Development
How do the mothers in the novel feel about teaching traditions to their daughters? Why?
What does this passing along of family or ethnic traditions represent?
What is the female and male dynamic in your family? How it is similar to or different than
the Polish one presented in the book?
Why does Helen believe that no daughter will leave her mother? What kinds of boundaries
do mother-daughter relationships have?
When in the novel do gender roles hurt the characters? When do they benefit from them?
Find specific examples of each.
Do any of the Marchewka women rebel against what is expected of them as women? Who,
how, and why do you think she does so?
Pears on a Willow Tree: Discussion & Comprehension Questions
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Key Vocabulary
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Gender Roles in Pears on a Willow
Tree
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Word:
Definition:
Gender
The mental and social state of being male or female
Sex
The biological characteristics that distinguish males and females of any
species
Sexuality
The state or quality of being sexual; sexual orientation
Gender Role
Behaviors expected of a person because he is male or she is female
Feminism
A doctrine or movement that advocates equal rights for women
Sexism
Discrimination based on sex and/or gender
Misogyny
Discrimination against or dislike of women
Pears on a Willow Tree: Key Vocabulary
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Book: Pears on a Willow Tree
Author: Leslie Pietrzyk
Grade Level: 9-12
Lesson Type: Character Development
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Text References
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Gender Roles in Pears on a Willow
Tree
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Book: Pears on a Willow Tree
Author:!Leslie!Pietrzyk!
Grade Level: 9-12
Lesson Type: Character Development
(Page 6): “When husbands and sons refused to listen, there was the daughter.”
(Page 14): “The men are wrong, I think, to want so much the boys when it is the girls who
keep the family alive.”
(Page 21): “’Be always careful now what you think and do. Someone is here watching you,
learning.’ I shook my head. She said, ‘That is the reason to want a boy.’ …As if I’d asked the
question, my mother said, ‘Because a boy will not be you. You know that. But a girl you
expect will be you. And then she isn’t.’”
(Page 32): “I will teach my daughter Ginger things like this, making applesauce and
embroidery and why it’s important to mop the kitchen on the same days each week, and
she will listen to me and nod.”
(Page 61): “’Now, who are you?’ It was the blondest bridesmaid asking, the one who looked
just like Cinderella in the movie, who stood as if she were waiting for talking animals to
snuggle on her shoulder and share their secrets. … No one real could be more beautiful;
when she looked at me, I felt my face turn ugly red, and I tucked my arms tight against my
body, so she wouldn’t see that I hadn’t scrubbed my elbows.”
(Page 153): “The living room is where the men and the children sit when the whole family
gets together, when there’s company. I don’t know what they talk about; all I know is that
it’s different than what I talk about with the women in the kitchen.”
(Page 164): “‘No daughter should leave her mother,’ she said. ‘So Ginger will come home.’
But you never went back, I wanted to say. As if I’d spoken, she whispered, ‘I never saw my
mother again. That’s what I paid for my family to be in this country.’”
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Pears on a Willow Tree: Text References
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Title Field: Supplementary Materials Chart
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Description
of Material
Article
about The
Feminine
Mystique
and the
beginning
of the
women’s
movement
YouTube
videos
showing
stereotypical
1950s gender
roles
Potential Use
Link to Resource
History of
feminism and
more discussion
of gender roles in
the mid-20
century
American
household
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2011/01/24/110124crbo_books_menand
More historical
background on
gender roles in pop
culture
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS37SNYjg8w&list=PLr8Zrc3ja71abuiWCa4qVAoGxDexA0kkU!
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