The Statue of Liberty may embrace the huddled masses of the world, but has American society always joined in? After young historians read a passage about the history of American immigration in the 19th and 20th centuries, focusing on immigrant groups from Asia and Latin America, they complete short-answer questions about what they have learned. Next, they write a biography detailing the journey and accomplishment of a selected immigrant of note.

Concepts

immigration, united states immigration, chinese immigration, discrimination, illegal immigration, the cold war, refugees, world war ii, biography writing

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Additional Tags

social studies

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Instructional Ideas

• Encourage learners to choose a person from the list with whom they are not already familiar, or randomly assign people to students

Classroom Considerations

• Lesson does not include a writing rubric or key with suggestions for short answer questions
• As the reading passage was published in 2003, it does not contain the most current immigration discussions and legislature; prompt learners to conduct additional research
• References the hot topic of illegal immigration
• The second resource in a series of 10

Pros

• Contains two helpful graphs to illustrate the influx of immigrants by decade and by year
• Provides a reference list of historical laws regulating immigration throughout American history
• Includes a guide for establishing a protocol for respectful and thoughtful disscussion of sensitive topics

Cons

• Passage often refers to Chinese immigrants as Chinese or the Chinese; it uses the same terminology for Japanese immigrants

Common Core

RI.9-10.1 RI.11-12.1 W.9-10.2.a W.11-12.2.a