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    America: The Melting Pot

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    Subject: Social Studies

    Lesson Length: 45 - 50 mins

    Topic: Identity and Immigration

    Grade Level: 5

    Standards / Framework:

    Brief Description: 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.

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

    Hook:

    • 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?

    Activity:

    • 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.

    Closure:

    • 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.

    Differentiation:

    • 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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