Category: Visual Arts

Massachusetts Social Studies: MA 2.T3 “History: Migration and Cultures”

C3 Social Studies: D2.Civ.10.K2 “Compare their own point of view with others’ perspectives”

Massachusetts Visual Arts: 1-2.V.Co.10 “Synthesize and relate knowledge and personal experiences to make art”

Massachusetts Language Arts: W2.3 “Write narratives in prose…that recount a well-elaborated event or experience…”

This unit is designed to connect to the other social studies topics that are in the Massachusetts second grade curriculum standards, including: reading and making maps (2.T1), understanding ways in which people adapt to their local environments (2.T2), highlighting the characteristics of a country outside of the U.S. (2.T4), and investigating how human and physical resources can vary across countries (2.T5).  The unit also connects to the state’s first and second grade visual arts standards, and second grade language arts standards. As a unit that connects many topics and disciplines, it is well-suited to being used as either the first or last unit of the year.  If used as the first unit, teachers can use natural “exit ramps” to enter related topics – for example, finding out that people often move because of economic opportunity provides a logical way to investigate geographic differences in economic resources.  Alternatively, as a final, or “capstone” unit, the lessons in the unit can extend many ideas that have already been covered (for example, by providing students with the opportunity to demonstrate their mapping skills by visualizing a migration).  In the interest of simplicity, the version of the unit presented here assumes that the unit is used as a capstone project, and therefore covered at the end of second grade.

To keep students focused on an overarching purpose as they work through a wide range of ideas and activities, the unit is focused on answering a single question – Why do people migrate, and how does the process of migrating effect people and countries?[1]  This over-arching question is designed to support analytical inquiry because it addresses multiple dimensions of migration – including the triggers, process, and consequences of migration on individuals and society – that can be investigated separately in “chunks” that young students can manage, yet also provides a unifying theme that students can use to connect the pieces together into a richer understanding of the whole.  In other words, it is a cognitively demanding and practically relevant question that second grade students can analytically engage with.

To support the students in their analytical inquiry, the lessons in the unit are connected together by a concrete “project” that involves understanding, documenting, and publishing the immigration experience of someone in the school community.  This project-based approach results in four distinct groups of lessons that are designed to be taught in the following sequence:

1. Building background: The first two lessons introduce the goal of the project and immerse students in whole-classroom, small-group, and self-directed inquiry into the causes, process, and real-world consequences of immigration.  
2. Data collection: The second set of lessons teach students how to collect information from interviewing primary sources by creating questions, conducting, and recording and interview.
3. Data analysis and content production: The third set of lessons teach students how to analyze and document their “findings” – through writing and collage “workshops” that involve self-direction activities as well as structured peer feedback. 
4. Publishing and presenting: In the final set of lessons, students assemble their content into a single web-based narrative and present their work to the broader school community. 

In this way, the individual lessons connect to one another through the various project phases that many real-world projects involve, providing second graders with exposure to valuable life-skills while they grapple with intellectually stimulating and practically relevant content.   

The project-based design of this unit allows students with considerable freedom to direct their own inquiry and to create their own responses to the question posed.[2]  This room for self-direction extends into each phase of the project. For example, students can:

• explore a set of curated resources on their own as they build background;
• create unique questionnaires for their interviews as they collect data;
• create unique visual interpretations and narratives of their interviews; and
• package together and present their material in unique ways.

As a result of this freedom, students could end up with considerably different narratives and visual creations in response to the compelling question for the unit.  For example, some students might analyze immigration from the point of view of refugees that have had trouble assimilating, and conclude that immigration is often not a choice and is difficult to undertake.  Other students might develop an understanding of immigration that emphasizes the new experiences that immigrants have when they move to a new place.  Yet other students might develop a perspective of immigration that recognizes the lasting impression that immigrants make in our communities.             

Regardless of the perspective that students end up presenting in their web-page, they will be provided with several opportunities to share their new perspectives with their community.  First, each student will present his/her own work to the classroom.  Second, the students will select three pieces to present to first graders.  And third, students will publish their electronic work on the school website (in a section that is likely to be promoted through social media) and display their physical collages in a public area at school.  In this way students will not only learn how to analyze information to develop their own perspective, but also how to share that new perspective with community-members to become change-agents.

[1] Social studies standard: MA 2.T3

[2] This freedom is balanced with a need for structure, or scaffolding – each phase of the project includes templates and resources that can be adjusted to the needs of individual students.

I picked migration as a topic, and project-based learning as a teaching approach because these choices allow me to apply what I have learned – as an immigrant, parent, and worker – to provide students with a rich educational experience regardless of their backgrounds.  To me, a “rich” educational experience is one that develops a wide range of human capacities – social, emotional, and cognitive – that will allow a student to live a life that is meaningful to the student.  This perspective is closely aligned with a “humanist” view of the purpose of education as a way to “equip students with knowledge that is lasting, important, and fundamental” (Teaching Workshop slide #3).  Yet, as someone who has lived in material poverty and lived in parts of the world where extreme material poverty is widespread, I also acknowledge the need to equip students with skills that are economically relevant (for someone experiencing material poverty, securing economic opportunity is likely to be the dominant purpose in life).  And, as someone who has been a member of a dominant social group in one country and a member of a marginalized social group in another, I recognize the importance of offsetting social forces that can bias education to favor certain groups over others.  Finally, as a parent, I have developed an appreciation for the (often dramatic) developmental changes that occur in children – for education to produce lasting and important change, it must be developmentally appropriate.

            The project-based teaching approach presented in this unit represents my attempt to create the conditions necessary for students from a wide range of backgrounds to actively construct meaningful knowledge using a wide range of skills.  For this approach to be successful, I will need to pay attention to several key objectives.  First, the unit must connect the compelling question and project tasks to students’ life experiences and interests.  In other words, students must be self-motivated for this approach to work.  Second, students must have freedom to tailor the project to their developmental level, cultural background, learning style, and educational goals.  This freedom is critical to keeping students engaged during the project and providing each student with an opportunity to learn in his/her “zone of proximal development.”  Third, students must be supported during the learning process – for example, through content-based scaffolds like curated links and web-page templates, as well as social scaffolds like small-group work.  Finally, just like a project manager might do, I will need to be willing to change the “scope” of the project, gather additional resources, or change the sequence of tasks that the students will engage in depending on how the lessons play out in the classroom. 

            Even with substantial preparation to meet the objectives outlined above, the unit is likely to challenge me as a teacher.  At this point in my career-change, I have not yet taught a real classroom.  So, I undoubtedly have a lot of blind spots related to my lack of teaching experience.  As an immigrant, I probably also have blind spots related to my intimate knowledge of the process of immigration that my students might not share.  A third source of surprises is probably going to be related to the time constraints of teaching full-time that limit my responses to student needs.  But – at least from my point of view right now – this is a feature, rather than a bug of teaching: it is a profession where you have to keep learning and growing as a person to do a good job.

• Access to the internet through a computer or tablet.
• 3-part graphic organizer
• Access to an immigrant
• A recording device such as a smartphone
• interview guide – one per student
• KWL sheet – one per student
• material to create a list of tips that can be placed on a wall.
• Construction paper, paint, glue, magazines, other art supplies for collage
• Printer and electronic images relevant for interviews and/or printed material
• Notebooks to create narrative

Websites

• Interviews with young immigrants (primary source)
• Ellis island tour
• Website about immigration for kids
• Article on the history of pizza
• World migration map
• U.S. Immigration over time
• activation video for interview lessons
• video for open ended question activity
• Katie Couric’s interview tips
• Romare Bearden resource packet from the National Gallery of Arts (includes primary sources)
• Access to and knowledge of adobe spark 
• example of final story
• Google maps

Books

• What is a refugee by Elise Gravel
• Dreamers by Yuyi Morales
• All the way to America: The Story of a Big Italian Family and a Little Shovel by Dan Yaccarino
• “We Came to America”

I am continually looking for ways to improve – please leave a comment if you want to share an idea or point out a mistake!