President’s
Day will be celebrated on Monday, February 15th. Usually when
President’s Day is addressed in the classroom, it takes place in the primary
grades with activities centered around some of the nation’s most revered
presidents. But what if this year, observing this national holiday in the
classroom was different? What if President’s Day was used as a springboard for
engaging students in exploratory learning where they connect the study of our
presidents and the power of the executive branch to the topic of immigration?
Here are
three engaging resources, two of which are created using HSTRY, a digital learning platform, to help
you plan an exciting lesson to teach about immigration. We encourage you to set-up
a free teacher account on HSTRY in order to adapt the lessons and share with
students.
1) American
By Belief: A Family Story
- Unless you are 100% Native American your family came to the United States
from someplace else. People come for a variety of reasons — to work, reunite
with family, get an education or sometimes in search of safety and freedom. This
brief lesson is a perfect way to initiate a classroom discussion on why people migrate.
You can also extend the activity with our Crossing Borders with Digital
Storytelling lesson plan,
as well as with the President Lincoln Cottage’s lesson
plan for their American By Belief exhibit. The brochure of their educational
programs includes a map
to “Tell Your Immigration Story.” You can also email them for a free hard copy which
makes for a larger classroom display.
 |
| An immigrant writes on note on the wall of the "American by Belief" exhibit at President Lincoln's Cottage explaining how she named her son after the President. Credit: http://lincolnscottage.tumblr.com/ |
Engage your
students using this lesson we co-created with HSTRY. After you set-up a teacher
account, click “copy the timeline,” then sort images and text (using a drag and
drop function) into the six identified push/pull factors of immigration.
Designed for primary learners (grades 3 and up), this lesson can easily be modified
for older students. Students can copy the timeline and add more text and images
to fill the categories. Debrief as a class and use the student handbook on HSTRY to properly cite online sources.
Click here
to access the American By Belief: A Family Story lesson.
2) Lincoln and Immigrant Contributions to
the Civil War – This lesson is almost guaranteed to deepen understanding
of our nation’s 16th president! In this lesson, students will
evaluate the impact and reception of immigrants and their contributions to the
Union Army during the U.S. Civil War and explore how immigrants view Lincoln.
Examining
three essential questions about immigrant contributions in the Civil War,
students sort the text and images to best answer the questions using the HSTRY
platform. They add more resources through recommended sites such as the Library of Congress’s Civil War collection. This lesson is designed for high
school students, who can then use sentence stems provided to write and discuss
how immigrants contributed to the Union victory. Additionally, this lesson
could not have been developed without the scholarship of Professor Jason
Silverman, author of Lincoln and the Immigrant, and Patrick Young, Esq.
Click here
to access the Lincoln and Immigrant Contributions to the Civil War lesson plan.
3) Two
Timely Lessons to Teach about Executive Action:
The President’s
executive action on immigration has been greeted with joy, relief, sadness, and
contempt. Just what is an executive action and how can students examine the
multiple responses to it are the focus areas of our two popular lesson plans.
It is a rich opportunity in the high school classroom to: extend
critical discussions on the separation of powers, examine the effects
of policy on individuals, and analyze the arguments made by both sides
to help students become civically engaged and informed.
Click here
to read our blog post about our lessons and access both of the lesson plans.
We seek to
connect teachers and students with the most relevant, fact-based information to
teach immigration critically and creatively–-at no cost. If you like our work, please share this email, tell a friend and
give them this link http://bit.ly/1KdE5Zz to receive updates and free resources
such as lesson plans, books reviews, and community grants. Follow us on twitter @ThnkImmigration #teachimmigration.
