Immigration+Experience+&+Inquiry


 *  //Lex Everson// **

- This activity is designed to draw from your students own prior and experiential knowledge, and so is applicable to all ages, but is designed to use materials secondary students are typically the most familiar with. As the dynamic of each classroom is different, this activity has the potential to be navigated by students from any socio-economic situation.
 * Grade Level **: Secondary


 * Event **:

// Individual // - Students are to do research into their own cultural and family background, finding out where their family originally came from, and locating if not a member of their own family, then a person from a similar background to interview. (When you introduce the assignment of interviewing someone from their family make sure to touch on the fact that backgrounds will vary, and while some may have ancestors who were brought over involuntarily through slavery or indentured servitude, there are some who's family may originate from the Americas.) - This interview is to provide them with a picture of what it may have been like for their family when they first arrived in America. - Questions they should ask, or general topic of conversation should include: Why this person left their country of origin; who they came with, or left behind and why; what was the profound experience they had when they came over; and how they view themselves now, as Americans, as Immigrants, and why they identify as such. - Students should retain a copy of their interview findings to bring back to their group when discussing their question. // Peer Group // - Along with the personal interview students will collaborate with at least two other students, grouped by the teacher to form a heterogeneous team, and together they discuss what they discovered in their interviews, as well as outside research pertaining to immigration. At this point they will, together, frame a question they have pertaining to their findings. - This collaboration must be chronicled somehow. Be it through writing, voice recording, videotaping, or any other means. This will be used later as a resource and data in their final project. - Through the original grouping of at least three students it is your job to make sure at least one has access to the modes of technology listed above. //Essential Components// <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">- Additional research on current immigration is also required, as well as studying the standards as they were when the students’ family may have immigrated. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">- Time should be taken to help students practice their interviewing skills. Demonstration, and viewing examples of good interviewers and interviews will help to give them direction and flesh out their research. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">- The final project will be a group synthesis, in which one group, or several, team together to best express the main ideas, conclusions, implications, and the question they formed as a group as they explored. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">- The project must include at least one group. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">- It must call upon the interview, research, and chronicling they experienced throughout the journey. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">- The students have to embed their question somewhere within their final project, and explain how it interacted with their findings. This will then be presented in some form to the rest of the class.


 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Multi-modal **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">:

<span style="font-family: 'times new roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">- Students will be using at least three types of writing and interaction throughout the assignment, and are encouraged to use more than that. Through interviewing another person one on one, chronicling their group discussion, and final presentation of their work, they are employing many different identities: Interviewer/journalist, scribe/debater/teammate/inquirer, and presenter/orator/actor. All of these meet and exceed the Speaking & Listening requirements of the Common Core State Standards.


 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Reading, Synthesis, & Social Change **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">:

<span style="font-family: 'times new roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;"> Throughout their research students are to find numerous resources and through collaboration with their group-mates, sift through finding commonalities, anomalies, and generally synthesize their work. Teacher facilitation will provide them with different methods, such as matrices, with which to better formulate their information. In this way, the teacher can guide students through metacognitive processes when analyzing their positions and theories. <span style="font-family: 'times new roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Primary sources! <span style="font-family: 'times new roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;"> Finally, when presenting their end product, each group will be given the opportunity to record their findings and to publish them in the form best suited. For instance, should students opt to do a performance or oral presentation; a video can be made and posted via Youtube.


 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16px;">Explanation **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 16px;">: Through asking questions about their own background, students will see themselves actively in the history of their family. This will activate their motivation as well as prior knowledge they may have of their ancestral story. The requirement of an interview with an individual who went through the immigration process, or had direct involvement, through parent to child interaction, story-telling, or some other relationship, is to make them aware of any misconceptions they may foster. When coming back to their initial group with their findings, they should discuss the common experiences from each form of immigration. From this discussion the group as a whole will decide upon a question they wish to find deeper meaning in, and so their inquiry question is now the focus of their research. The research they do on those people who immigrated similarly to their own ancestors will give them a clearer picture from which to create a question or inquiry. Because the students have created this question on their own, it will be one they are interested in, and so self-motivating to study. Each original group of three was made through a conscious heterogeneous grouping method by the teacher, and at each step of the activity the teacher acts as facilitator through giving critical feedback and analysis of what the students have found so far and where they plan on going next. Student driven learning and inquiry. The objective of this exercise to form a critical literacy of immigration in its many facets, and to work through collaboration to create an end product that best encapsulates their findings as a group.


 * <span style="font-family: 'times new roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">To learn more about Inquiry based learning and teaching, check out these explanatory pages! **

http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/inquiry/ http://teachinquiry.com/index/Introduction.html