Teaching Strategies
Interviews
Guiding first grade students and their families through simple open ended interview questions regarding immigration will not only give students more stability in their own back story but will also provide empowering insight into self awareness and critical thinking in their future development. If your demographic is like mine, the challenge is to encourage parent and family support in a sensitive and respectful manner since some families are legal residents and citizens, and others are not. In all aspects of this activity, take opportunities to assure them in clear and non-threatening ways that all the information collected is only used to enrich student learning and will not be published outside of the classroom. Students will manage interview data in class as they create charts, graphs, and a pictorial timeline helping them connect to their past as well as connect to one another.
Students will practice interview questions and answers with each other, buddies, and family. They will also practice interview question and answers through their pen pals who are local convalescent home members. A good resource is this link to a lesson plan for first and second grades on interviewing their families about their immigration. http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/lesson-plan/learning-interview. Another good resource is a lesson plan for fourth through eighth grades on immigration and includes interviews. www.ailf.org/teach/lessonplans/m11_makingimmigrationcomealive.pdf
Tours
Students will experience our neighborhood close up and personally with a walking tour, a bus tour, as well as meeting and greeting culturally diverse owners at their places of business or as invited guests at our school. On our walking tour students will walk with clipboard, paper, and pencil to document places and items of interest to them, drawing and labeling to help them remember what they saw and to which things they felt connected. On our bus tour, students will visit landmarks of cultural interest such as sites along the Cesar E. Chavez Memorial Walkway that was established in March 2010. The sites include the following: the Mexican Heritage Plaza, established in 1999 and serves as a cultural museum, community center, school, and performing arts venue; the Cesar E. Chavez Elementary School, opened in 1992 and serves 600 students K-5; the Mayfair Community Center, opened in 2009 in the neighborhood formerly known as "Sal Si Puedes"; and Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, officially established in 1962 and instrumental in community organizing efforts such as the United Farm Workers' movement in 1950s and 1960s. Other sites of cultural interest include those in the "Sal Si Puedes" neighborhood such as the following: Plaza de San Jose Retail Center, opened in 2005 on the site of a former dairy farm; the Tropicana Shopping Center, once an expansive orchard sold to Tropicana housing development; Emma Prusch Farm Park, donated in 1962 upon Emma's passing to ensure the history of this once large dairy farm remain; Mayfair Community Garden in operation since 1977 providing garden plots to neighborhood families; Little Saigon Business District indicated by the signs unveiled in 2011, and the Grand Century Shopping Mall, opened in 2000 to cater to post 1975 immigrants with reminders and comfort foods from Vietnam. 29 (Also see Appendix B) Links to the list above and maps are provided in the "Internet Resources" section of this unit as well.
Students will have the opportunity to draw something important to them in the neighborhood, bring it to class to share. Knowing that it will be natural for students to compare and judge one another, we will create a more comfortable environment for sharing through practice of listening respectfully. Imbedded in the lessons and activities will be guidance to practice respect with the class perspective that whatever they choose to share, different is neither good or bad, and same is neither good or bad. After sharing, students can work in groups to create a collage of important landmarks in neighborhood through their perspectives. Students can also work with their older buddies from the fourth grade class and high school class to create a map of where these landmarks really are in our neighborhood. To show their learning, students can present their illustrated maps and take us on a Neighborhood Walk while they narrate and tell about their chosen landmarks.
Cognitive Mapping
I have found kinesthetic and whole body strategies so important in my teaching, and try to use as many of students' senses as possible in lessons not only in science, but also across all areas of instruction. This strategy of Cognitive Mapping, a way to discover more in-depth social and political information about a population, also engages students' five senses to connect and find meaning in historical places or objects and to keep the aesthetic experience of that space more concretely in their memory. Yi-Fu Tuan, a geographer quoted in Hayden's The Power of Place says, "Children show an interest in landmarks at three or earlier and by age five or six can read aerial maps with great accuracy and confidence, illustrating the human ability to perceive and remember the landscape." 30 Students can practice and build this strategy starting with one of our activities of finding a landmark in the neighborhood with which they connect. They can gather all the appropriate information through their senses, illustrate, write, and share about it. Students can practice this strategy throughout our unit as we advance our activities engaging more comprehension and critical thinking with our tours, mappings, and writings of the physical and cultural community and city landscape.
Visual Thinking Strategy
This unit implements the Visual Thinking Strategy (VTS) with art and photographs. VTS is based on Phillip Yenawine's book, Visual Thinking Strategies: Using Art to Deepen Learning Across School Disciplines. Use the techniques to draw out prior knowledge, vocabulary, and critical thinking. This strategy allows several entry points for all students to feel comfortable and confident in sharing their ideas beginning with what they see in this case the historical art piece or photograph projected large enough for whole class engagement. For example, I can show my students an old photograph I came across of downtown San Jose, specifically Market and San Fernando Streets. 31 We actually went on a field trip to that site last year as it is now the San Jose Museum of Art, and across the street is the Plaza de Cesar Chavez. The VTS activities are helpful to also build in young student skills in listening, taking turns, sharing, and collaboration.
When gathering students closely around the projected image, the facilitator asks these three open ended questions: "What's going on in this picture?", "What do you see that makes you say that?", and "What more can we find?" The facilitator paraphrases the students' comments neutrally, points at the area being discussed, and links and frames each response. Students need to look carefully at the artwork, describe what they observe, back up their observation with evidence, listen respectfully to others' input, and discuss multiple possible interpretations.
Parent Involvement
Throughout this unit there are many opportunities for parents and family members to participate, enriching the children's experience. One way to participate is through our family interviews to share their own basic immigration and migration stories with their children. They will be able to complete simple interview questions, and hopefully, supplement the answers to pass on their unique family history. Students are encouraged do more to capture their family stories in creative ways that include drawings, writings, and photographs. Another avenue for parents and family to participate is by being one of our Mystery Readers. These are adult volunteers who come in specifically to read a story aloud to the whole class addressing different cultures and traditions. These stories will be in English and hopefully in other languages such as Spanish and Vietnamese. Exposing the students to different languages, cultures, traditions, and celebrations will help them better connect with one another and in our diverse community. Another fun way to participate is for parents, family, alumni of our school, and community members to be Mystery Speakers. These adult volunteers can share their immigration stories and help students understand the complex idea of how the changes in immigration and migration are reflected in the school and the community.
Project Based Learning
Project Based Learning (PBL) is a great strategy to help teachers plan effective and engaging lessons with high quality end products. As an example of an end product of a project, students will create a way (poster) to show the history of our community and present to a public audience. The planning involves eight main areas of competencies for the teacher to address. The first element is "Significant Content" which ties the project to the Common Core and Content Standards, such as our California History/Social Science standards for "A Child's Place in Time and Space" (HSS 1.5) The second element is "A Need to Know" which involves creating a list of questions students have and considering what students need to be successful in reaching a high quality end product. The third element is "A Driving Question" that is open-ended yet focuses on the heart of the compelling project, for instance "How can we show the history of our community?" The forth element is "Student Voice and Choice" which allows students to express what they have learned incorporating their own style. The fifth element is '21 st Century Competencies" ensuring collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and creativity/innovation. The sixth element is "In-Depth Inquiry" which drives students' authentic search and discovery in answering their own questions. The seventh element is "Critique and Revision" which involves planning for drafts, peer feedback, and revision along the way to a high quality end product. The eighth element is "Public Audience" which means to invite parents, peers, representatives of the community, business, and government organizations for the exhibition or presentation, including a question and answer time at the end. A link to more PBL information is included in the "Internet Resources" section.
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