LESSON:
My Journey to America: a personal journey through immigration
GRADE LEVELS:
Grade 5 to Grade 8
DURATION:
4 to 5 class periods (plus an education trip day). This lesson plan was designed to be customized to your learning standards and to meet the needs of your students. Complete the whole lesson or select parts to use that best fit your learning standards and time.
OVERVIEW:
Students will explore the topic of immigration through fiction and non-fiction sources, as well as other materials to better understand the role memory plays in history. Through creating a scrapbook of a fictional immigrant’s experience, students will begin to understand how we can learn about the past through a variety of sources.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
Students will be able:
- to understand the role that memory plays in understanding history
- to understand how we learn about the past through various sources
- to develop empathy towards past experiences of individuals
- to draw connections between the experiences people went through in the past and personal experiences today
ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS:
- What constitutes a memory?
- How do memories contribute to our understanding of the past?
- Why do people remember the same event differently?
MATERIALS:
- My Journey to America Lesson Plan Packet PDF
- Reading: The Smell of Fatigue and My Grandfather’s Journey PDF
- Pictures of immigrants at Ellis Island PDF and Photograph Citations PDF
- Video: Island of Hope and Island of Tears
- Background Information for Educators PDF
For details on Education Tours and Programs - or to schedule a program call 201-332-8485 or email us.
