Lesson One
Universal Design
Sara, put a link here to the Universal Design material that is also on the side bar.
Essential Question: Why do people move from one place to another?
o What economic and societal factors have influenced the movement of people from one place to another?
o What other factors influence the movement of people?
o Why is it important to understand the factors that cause people to move from place to another?
o What characteristics of a place would entice you to move from one place to another? Why are these important to you?
Background
As in the past, people today continue to move from one place to another for a variety of reasons. This map shows the countries receiving these immigrants (blue), those losing people to immigration (brown), and those relatively unaffected by immigration (green).
Why do people leave their homeland? What is happening in countries where people are willing to leave family and friends to seek a new life in a new country?
How are countries impacted by immigration? Why are immigrants viewed as a mixed blessing? How do countries benefit from immigration? How are they adversely affected by immigration? Why is immigration such a controversial issue in many countries?
Are you happy in this country? Are there any circumstances that would make you consider moving to another country? What are they?
Strategy 1
Gathering Information: Explicit Teaching/Setting the Stage for Learning
Strategy one focuses on content. Students are learning content and gathering information.
Explicit instruction begins with setting the stage for learning. This stage suggests the use of an advance organizer to help students recall what they already know about the topic.
Ask the students to work in small groups to recall what they have already learned about why people first came to the North American continent. Give them time to brainstorm what they already know about:
o How the First Americans may have come across the Bering Strait
o The Pilgrims
o Colonization
o African Americans Coming to the United States
o Their Own Ancestors
o Any of the Mass Migrations from Europe
o The Chinese Workers on the Railroads
o The Holocaust
Discuss as a total class the reasons these people came to this continent. List all of the reasons on the board or on a transparency. Use the following advance organizer to help organize the reasons into categories. Put examples of groups of people who came to this country under the various categories.
FREEDOM TO WORSHIP / FREEDOM FROM OPPRESSION / FREEDOM FROM WANT / FREEDOM FROM FEAR / FREEDOM TO CREATE / OTHERREASONS
Note: Do not try to make this list complete. At this point you are simply setting the stage for learning by having students recall prior knowledge.
Next have the students gather additional information about why people have migrated to the United States. This website is about Thirteen Reasons Why Ancestors Migrated.
com/learn/library/article.aspx?article=1436
Note: This website should be viewed as some of the factors that influenced our ancestors to move as a people. However, these thirteen (in no particular order) do appear throughout history as the most common reasons for migrating to a new place.
Have the students add this additional information about why people migrate to their advance organizer.
Now, have the students work in groups to write generalizations. Assign one category to each group and tell them to reflect on what they have recorded there. Have them write a one sentence generalization about why people move.
o Freedom of Worship:
§ Example: People immigrated because they were searching for a place where they could worship as they pleased.
o Freedom From Oppression:
o Freedom From Want:
o Freedom From Fear:
o Freedom to Create:
Have each group record their generalization on the board and describe what it means. Leave all of the generalizations on the board.
Strategy 2
Extending and Refining Information: Explicit Teaching
Explicit instruction moves from extensive teacher input and involvement to more student responsibility for their own learning.
Have the students reflect on the meaning of each of the generalizations recorded on the board. Use the PBS website to get a historical perspective and to talk about why these freedoms are still important reasons for immigration today.
Sara, clicking the picture goes to the link. You can put the link above where it says PBS website. You don’t have to keep the picture.
http://www.pbs.org/destinationamerica/usim_wy.html#
Students should view each of the videos and talk about why these freedoms are still important reasons for immigration today.
o Who is the Dalai Lama? Why was Tserling’s mother tortured for swearing allegiance to him? Do you think some of her relatives might have immigrated to the United States to in search of religious freedom?
o Why do Guatmalan authorities do little to help women like Rodi Alvarado? Why do women like her feel that there only hope to escape this oppression is to immigrate?
o What was the potato famine? Why did the Irish view the United States as a last resort as they fled from their native land to escape from “want”?
o Why did the rise of Hitler in Germany terrify many Jewish people? Why did they turn to the United States for asylum and freedom from fear?
o What is facism? How did Arturo Toscanini use his creativity to demonstrate his hatred for facism and his love freedom? How did the United State encourage this freedom to create?
Strategy 3
Application: Explicit Teaching/Problem Solving
The ultimate goal of explicit teaching is total student responsibility in applying the information in a new setting with a minimum of teacher input.
Provide the following information to the students
Americans have always been ambivalent about immigration, with realistic concerns bumping into altruistic, even romantic notions. The romance is summed up in the inscription on the Statue of Liberty, erected in 1886, proclaiming the famous lines ''give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.'' The ambivalence was expressed a mere four years earlier, when Congress enacted the first immigration restrictions, specifically excluding "paupers, ex-convicts, mental defectives and Chinese." That was at the beginning of the greatest wave of immigration in American history, which brought in 18 million new citizens, diversified U.S. society and gave us the enduring analogy of the ''melting pot.''
Now the United States is in the midst of another great wave of immigration, which brings in roughly one million new residents a year, but has yet to give us another analogy. More than one in 10 U.S. residents are immigrants, and while that's the highest share of the overall American population since the 1930s, it's still below the high of 15 percent recorded in 1890 and 1910, according to a recent Census Bureau report. Most of the new immigrants come from Latin America and Asia. Like the earlier wave, the influx is likely to fundamentally change America, but Americans have yet to work through how they feel about it. Immigration policy is about deciding what kind of country the United States is going to be.
o How have many Americans traditionally viewed immigration?
o How do many Americans view the new wave of immigration from Latin American and Asia?
Have the students do some additional research concerning our current immigration concerns:
http://www.publicagenda.org/issues/overview.cfm?issue_type=immigration
Have students work in groups to analyze why so many people today want to find a new way of life in the United States? Consider the following categories.
o Freedom of Worship
o Freedom from Oppression
o Freedom from Want
o Freedom from Fear
o Freedom to Create
Have each group decide which category is most relevant today and tell why. Then ask them to decide:
o Should we honor our commitment to these newcomers? Why or why not?
o Should we cut back to preserve out security and culture? Why or why not?
o Should we cutback in response to economic realities? Why or why not
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Sara, what do you think about Bob’s icon? Do we need one, this one, a different one??
Universal Design: Activate the following website to explore alternative ways to teach this lesson:
Ø http://www.nationalgeographic.com/education/xpeditions/lessons/09/g35/Migrations.html
Universal Design: Calls for teachers to present material in multiple ways. Follow this link to analyze different ways to present the same material.
· Note that this lesson demonstrated the use of one strategy and how it could be used at three different levels of student thinking.
· However, a multitude of different strategies could have been used at all three levels of student thinking to accommodate the different learning styles of students
This link will take you to a manual of other strategies to examine as optional ways to present the same material.
(Sara – Put a link here to the Table of Contents for the Skills Manual that you are going to put online.