Classroom Activities
Day 1 Activities
During day one, students will be introduced to the vocabulary for the unit. They will complete an augmented Frayer Model for those vocabulary words. In the Frayer model, the students will write the word in the center and then define the word in the upper left-hand corner. Since many of my students are bilingual, in the upper right-hand corner the students will list out the word with different endings so that the word is understood in various settings. For instance, if the word is explorer the other versions of the word would include explores, exploring, explored, exploration, etc. In the bottom left-hand corner, the students would use the word in a sentence, either created together by the entire class or done independently. In the bottom right-hand corner, the students will draw a quick picture to jog their memory. For instance, with the word explorer the students could draw a ship or a map to show an explorer.
Following the vocabulary activity, students will receive a KWL chart to complete with their readings. In the KWL chart, the students will list what they know, what was the reading about, like a summary, and then what they have learned. The title of the KWL chart will be the word migration and students will list what they know about migration in the top half of the K column on the chart. Those answers could range from the definition of migration, which would have just been discussed, or it could reference animals migrating south in the winter. The teacher will ask the students to draw a line under the student definitions and ask the students a follow up question, “What about when people migrate? What does that mean or look like?” The teacher will give the students a few minutes to think about how migration applies to people. After some share out, the teacher will explain that migration with people is usually a response to an event or a law that is passed. For instance, following the war for Mexican independence, Mexicans were migrating from Mexico to the United States in search of jobs and a better way of life.
Following the KWL chart, students will read the excerpt along with the teacher as they read it aloud. They will highlight the vocabulary words that were just gone over in class and circle words they don’t understand so that they can be defined in the margin. The excerpt for this lesson comes from Esperanza Rising. For instance, the teacher might share the following quote with the students, “That night, as she soaked her hands in warm water, she realized that she no longer recognized them as her own. Cut and scarred, swollen and stiff, they looked like the hands of a very old man."23After reading through the short excerpt, students will write a two to three sentence summary of the passage. The teacher will then ask students to share out one thing that they learned from the reading and compile a list on an anchor chart or on the board. Answers should align with migration took place in other places, impacted not only African Americans, but it also wasn’t easy, work camps are hard, it’s okay to be sad with big changes. Together the teacher and students will fill out what the students should have learned from the passage. The students will keep this KWL chart in their interactive notebook for the duration of the unit of study.
Background Knowledge for the teacher
This unit is based on the Great Migration era of the United States. The unit, according to the Virginia standards, focuses on African American migration from the south to the North and West. What Virginia does not focus on is that there was a migration that started towards the end of the migration era as the Great Depression is starting to rear its ugly head. Students do not know that there is an influx of immigrants coming to the United States from Central America.
Day 5 Activities
During this class period, the students will receive a blank map of the United State and chronicle the mass exodus from the South of African Americans. On this map, students will draw the route that people could have taken from major cities in the south, like Atlanta, to major cities in the north and west like Detroit or Chicago. They will use one color to document the departure of African Americans. The students will also glue a picture of the Great Migration, the iconic one, where the family has loaded all they own into a car and are in dressed in their Sunday best attire. The students will glue that picture down on the right side of the paper. The teacher will model where major cities are in Mexico and the Southwest region of the United State. The teacher will then show the students the path that Mexicans could have taken to reach the United States. The teacher will also show pictures of what the work camps could have looked like that Esperanza lived in. The students will map out those routes that people took to leave Mexico in a color that is separate from the one that was use for the Great Migration of African Americans.
The students will then create a Venn Diagram to compare the two groups of people who participated in a migration. They will respond to the Wh question stems – who, what, where, when and why. In the intersection of the circle, the students will explain how the migrations are similar and how the migrations are like the immigrants coming to the United States around the same time. This activity will live in their interactive notebook that they have for history class.
Day 10
This day comes after the unit of study has ended. Students have taken an assessment on the rise of communication, electrification, and transportation. They have answered questions on the Great Migration and Harlem Renaissance. At this point, the unit would typically be completely done, however, the impact of women is ever present in this unit of study. The students start this unit of study looking at the novel, Esperanza Rising, and that person is fictious. The goal is to put a face and a voice of a woman with the unit of study. To do that, the students will have a Google Slide presentation in their Google Drive that will be worked on throughout multiple units of study. The presentation will be set up like a museum gallery where there would be hyperlinks to other slides within the presentation that would take a visitor to a different room in the museum. Each room will be set up in the template and the students will complete the slides based on the room they are working on. For instance, if the topic is Hispanic Women, the students would complete the slide on Linda Chavez-Thompson.
The students will read a short biography about Linda Chavez-Thompson, would is a second generation Mexican American. Based on the limited information we have on her background, her father, who is described as a sharecropper living in West Texas, would have arrived to the United States around the same time that Esperanza and her family came to the United States.
The students would read a short biography on Linda and create an entry in their museum gallery about her. They would include her picture, her birthplace and birth information, her political background, what she did with the American Federation of Labor and what she does now. The students would also include a summary of her career and why she should be taught in schools.
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