This project was an absolute highlight of this year for me and I think for my students. It came about with a glimmer of an idea. I was working with grade group colleagues to plan out our year with socials. They looked at our syllabus and saw immigration and both of their faces fell… “Immigration, sigh, that is so boring!”
I was shocked! I loved this topic. So relevant these days and I knew exactly how to teach it. I knew why they thought it was boring. If you use the ‘textbook’ and read about it, complete worksheets… Yes, this is so boring! (Unless you are a history type person like me, who loves this stuff no matter what!) But really all of socials is boring if this is your approach!
They key is making it interesting and relevant to the students. And to do that, you need to connect it to them directly. Luckily for our country this is easy! Every one of our family’s have an immigration story (First Nations excepted of course). So we needed to tap into that.
Steps and How this Project works
Build Background Knowledge
Make sure students understand the basic concepts of immigration. There are push factors and pull factors. A refresher for those of you out there who are not familiar… A push factor is what pushes you to leave your home country. A pull factor is what brings you to the new country, mostly what brings you there over another country. Like why you choose to move to Australia and not New Zealand.
I had my students brainstorm this first off, and my grade 4s were able to come up with a general list with little prompting from me. Then later on, we did some more directed reading of push and pull factors in a text book (just to give them the text book experience!).
Get Family Information
I sent a notice home and a list of questions that family’s helped the students to answer. They had to decide on one family member’s story to showcase or share with the class. That offered some flexibility. Plus it isn’t a huge family tree project that can be difficult for some families to complete.
Create something to share
Once students returned to school with their information, they each created a mini-poster with a paragraph speech on the back to guide their sharing with their peers. This was a great visual and many students have been seen reading each other’s posters once they were all posted on our immigration bulletin board.
Create the large scale visual
Students helped to make a large scale world map on a bulletin board. They did the cutting out of the continents (I projected and traced them). Each student made a string the length of their family’s journey (from home country to Canada) with a little flag for their name and home country. They also attached a little picture with the mode of transportation icon. Their flags were colour coordinated based on the generation that immigrated. We were able to see some patterns. based on this and it made it even more visual.
Students Presented, Learned and Reflected
Lastly, they listened to each other’s stories, asked questions and eventually reflected on their learning. All students had a good understanding on the hardships of immigration,and why people immigrated (they had 27 different examples). Each student felt that they learned more about their classmates and it helped bring them closer together.
All in all, it was a great project that I highly recommend. If you would like to have access to the worksheets I used with my students along with a lot more detailed instructions, please visit my teachers pay teachers store.
I hope you can enjoy this learning experience with your class as much as I did with mine!
♥ Cassandra
PS. If you are looking for another great socials activity to do with your class check out this bartering activity! It works with any grade level or historical topic!
