K-12 Immigration

http://www.walworth.k12.wi.us/3-4%20Team/Stelling/Immigration%20Web%20Quest.htm

With the USA becoming increasingly an 'immigrant' nation, and with immigrant numbers predicted to continue to rise in years to come, the education of the youth on immigration has never been more important.

The K12 project i have chosen is made up of 4 parts; a timeline, a boys journey, tours of Ellis Island, and an immigrants friendly letter.

The timeline consists of students creating on line timelines including at least 7 dates which are important to US immigration, 5 of which must be when large groups of different immigrants entered the US. This part of the project is designed for students to discover for themselves gather an appreciation of the immigration history and diversity of the United States.

A boys journey involves students reading A boys journey by Seymour Rechtzeit (a story of a boys journey from Poland to the USA in the 1920s) on the Scholastic webpage. After each chapter, students are asked a series of questions challenging what they have took from the book, while challenging their opinions of immigration in the story. This section is designed for the students to encounter a real life retelling of the immigration process to the USA.

Tours of Ellis Island involves students taking interactive tours of Ellis Island and making notes for the next section; an immigrants friendly letter.

An immigrants friendly letter involves students using the information they have learned from the rest of the project to put themselves in the place of an immigrant and to write a first person letter back to their homeland. This portion of the project is designed to literally put the students in place of an immigrant and make them think along the same lines, and see the world as they do.

All of the sections of the project above revolve around inclusion, diversity, understanding, and compassion. I think that overall the project teaches on the theories of the salad bowl, in that although there are so many different races, ethnicities, and so on, the one common denominator is that they all share the same land, and that they are all American.