Objectives
- Students will use vocabulary related to turn-of-the-century immigrant life in New York City.
- Students will appreciate some of the challenges and difficulties of family life for immigrants.
- Students will understand how the families' lives were shaped by the environment in which they lived.
Materials
Procedures
- Introduce key vocabulary: boarder, citizen, crockery, immigrants, tenement, urban.
- Have students complete the Immigrants' Experiences worksheet after they visit The Urban Log Cabin website. This activity can be completed individually or with a partner.
- Set up a time when students can share their work, and a place for them to display their drawings.
Assessment
Use students' worksheet responses to evaluate their ability to gather information about immigrant families from a website. Assign a point value for each response.
Extensions Activities
- Choose from a large collection of cross-curricular activities for all grade levels.
- Explore outstanding lessons and activities on and tell them to click on the step-by-step instructions.
- Have students present their portraits to the class or school. Encourage them to focus on a specific aspect of their community that interests them.
Standards Correlations
National Social Studies Standards
http://www.socialstudies.org/standards/
Students develop an understanding of:
- how human beings create, learn, apply, modify, and adapt to their cultures.
- relationships between human beings and their environment.
- their historical roots and are able to locate themselves in time.
- how reading about and reconstructing the past allows them to develop a historical perspective.
- places and regions and the interactions of environment and society.
National Educational Technology Standards
http://cnets.iste.org/index2.html
Students:
- practice responsible use of technology systems, information, and software.
- use technology tools to enhance learning, increase productivity, and promote creativity.
Students use a Web resource to share some of the experiences of immigrants who recently arrived at Ellis Island. Then, as a newly arrived immigrant, they write a letter "back home."
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