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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
