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    America: The Melting Pot

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    At a Glance:

    Grades:5
    Subject:Social Studies
    Topic:Identity and Immigration
    Lesson Length:45 - 50 mins

    Standards / Framework:

    What will students learn in this activity?

    Students will become familiar with the variety of reasons different groups of people chose to leave their homes and start a new life in America.

    What should students know before this activity?

    Students should be able to define words such as: immigrant, religion, identity, freedom, culture, melting pot, heritage, traditions, prejudice, and persecution.

    How can teachers introduce this lesson?

    • Discuss immigration.

      • Why might a person want to leave their home to live somewhere else? 

      • What kinds of sacrifices might people have to make to move to another country?

    • Read and discuss the sample comic. Focus on immigration and reasons people might want to leave their homes (countries) to live in America. What did or does America offer?

    What will students do?

    • Using the sample comic as a guide, have students create a four-panel comic illustrating why a particular group of immigrants chose to come to America in the 18th-19th centuries and why immigrants today are coming to America.

    • The comics should:

      • Depict these groups and why they wanted to leave home to start a new life in America.

      • Include the reason(s) people chose to immigrate to America in the past.

      • Include the reason(s) people are choosing to immigrate to America in the present day.

    How can teachers wrap up the lesson?

    • Display posters with titles such as Religion or Land.
    • Have students post their printed comics under the reason they believe their chosen groups immigrated to America.
    • Discuss as a class and ask students to reflect on what they see.

    How can teachers differentiate this activity?

    • Allow students to use the speech-to-text feature.
    • Allow students to use the voiceover feature to read their comics aloud.

    • Provide visual examples of reasons why people may immigrate. 

    • Provide sentence frames as needed. 

    • Assign a specific immigrant group for the student comic.

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