Ashley Woodman

English 480
Professor Hays
28 April 2016
Unit Plan: Immigration
Introduction:
The unit is going to cover various aspects of immigration in the United States. Students
will be reading texts from the perspectives of immigrants, analyzing legal documents regarding
immigration, addressing various ethnic groups and their experiences, and will also view writing
that depicts the social attitudes towards immigrants. Immigration into the United States has been
happening for centuries, and so have the social issues surrounding it. My goal is for my students
to have a deeper understanding for immigrants and their hardships, and also to be informed of
the current social issues compared to issues in the past regarding immigration. I want students to
begin to form their own opinions and voce them.
Rationale:
There will be many students in my classes who have either come from parents who were
immigrants, or are immigrants themselves. There is a lot of pressure that falls on students of
immigrant families because of the recent social and political divides that have risen regarding
immigration. Unspoken, negative stereotypes exist that these students must face every day. It is
important for all students to realize that at some point, all of our (distant or non-distant) family
members were immigrants from somewhere. This is also important for non- immigrant students
to understand, because it will allow them to have empathy, and understanding for those students.
My hope is that they would be able to, after the unit, respect the hard work and trials that
immigrants have had to face for hundreds of years. My instruction can help both immigrant, and
non-immigrant students have respect and understanding for immigration, and develop a sense of
awareness of the fallacies of these stereotypes.
There is a huge cultural significance to this unit. By uncovering the broad term
immigrant, it opens up a door to talk about people that come from any country or territory. It is
welcoming of any person of any race who happens to fall under that term. Exploring many
different cultures, and immigrants that come from that culture, allow students to learn about
people who are different than them. Exposing students to other cultures is extremely important
because often, people subconsciously accept their culture as normal and anything that differs
than that is un-normal. This popular view is what tends to encourage students to treat others
who are different with negativity. For example, immigrants that come from areas where
witchcraft is still a popular and accepted practice are most likely going to have a far different
experience than someone from England when migrating to the U.S; in terms of acceptance.
Exposing students to various cultures will allow others traditions and ideas to become
normalized, as students realize that there is no one way to live.
Unfortunately, the only talk of immigration in the media currently surrounds illegal
immigration, which, here in Arizona, translates to illegal Hispanic immigration; even though
they are not the only ones here illegally. Therefore when people first hear the word
immigrants, they will most likely think of Mexico. Having a true understanding of what

immigration is beyond the stereotypes, and what people endure, is essential to functioning in
society. These students will one day be able to vote, have a voice in politics, and be able to help
change the worlds issues regarding immigration. In order for them to do that, they must have a
true, educational foundation of the subject, and what the issues are surrounding it.
Lesson Plans:
Week 1
Day 1 (Monday)
Standards:
- Analyze seminal U.S. documents of historical and literary significance (e.g.,
Washingtons Farewell Address, the Gettysburg Address, Roosevelts Four Freedoms
speech, Kings Letter from Birmingham Jail), including how they address related
themes and concepts. (9-10.RI.9)
Objectives:
Students will be able to interpret a legal immigration document by analyzing the Chinese
Exclusion Act as a class.
Students will be able to identify stereotypes about immigrants by completing Poll Everywhere
and discussing as a class.
Goals:
Students will vote on Poll Everywhere
Students will read Chinese Exclusion Act
Students will complete short answer writing prompt
2 minutes: attendance
15 minutes: Poll everywhere: The questions will surround current knowledge/stereotypes about
Immigration to see how much students really know about the topic as a whole, and we
will discuss why some people might have chosen certain answers. (These topics will
focus on past immigration eras in the U.S, AND present day immigration, which we will
eventually study more closely towards the end of the unit. By understanding trends in the
past regarding immigration, students will view current immigration trends with a new
lens.)
6 minutes: Introduce first topic we will look at closely; Angel Island and writing from Chinese
Immigrants. Brainstorm as a class anything they know from previous knowledge about
Angel Island. (Have students shout out anything and write have it written on board).
10 minutes: View and read aloud transcript of Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned Chinese
Immigrants for 10 years (link below), stop after each section of the government document
and analyze what is being said as a class. https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?
flash=true&doc=47&page=transcript
5 minutes: Have students get into groups of three or four. They will answer the following
prompt:
The Chinese exclusion Act (which we have just read and analyzed) lasted from 1882
1892. Angel Island opened in 1910. Before next class where we will view writing from
Chinese Immigrants in Angel Island, predict how this will affect Chinese immigrants
coming into the United States. What issues may the Chinese encounter and why?

10 minutes: Come back together as a class and discuss some of the points that each group has
come up with. Discuss any commonalities, find things we can agree on as a class.
Week 1
Day 2 (Tuesday)
Standards:
-Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid
reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence. (9-10.W.1)
- Analyze the representation of a subject or a key scene in two different artistic mediums,
including what is emphasized or absent in each treatment (e.g., Audens Muse des Beaux
Arts and Breughels Landscape with the Fall of Icarus).
(9-10.RL.7)
Objectives:
Students will be able to comprehend the citizenship process by completing a citizenship
interview and analyzing poems from Chinese immigrants.
Goals:
Students will complete quick write
Students will read Angel Island Poems
Students will give each other citizenship interview
2 minutes: Attendance
5 minutes: (Quick write) Yesterday we talked about the Chinese exclusion act. Do you think this
could ever happen to a group in the United States again? Why or why not?
5 minutes: Share quick writes (at least one person who said yes, and one who said no)
10 minutes: Read angel island poems, with little context first (they will know the poems are from
Chinese Immigrants in early 1900s), have students try to figure out what
is taking place (where, when).
(Unknown title)
There are tens of thousands of poems on these walls
They are all cries of suffering and sadness
The day I am rid of this prison and become successful
I must remember that this chapter once existed
I must be frugal in my dailyneeds
Needless extravagance usually leads to ruin
All my compatriots should remember China
Once you have made some small gains,
you should return home early.
(Unknown title)

Originally, I had intended to come to America last year.

Lack of money delayed me until early autumn.
It was on the day that the Weaver Maiden met the Cowherd1
That I took passage on the President Lincoln.
I ate wind and tasted waves for more than twenty days.
Fortunately, I arrived safely on the American continent.
I thought I could land in a few days.

How was I to know I would become a prisoner suffering in the wooden building?
The barbarians'2 abuse is really difficult to take.
When my family's circumstances stir my emotions, a double stream of tears flow.
I only wish I can land in San Francisco soon.
Thus sparing me the additional sorrow here.
5 minutes: Background of poems (carved on walls in Ellis Island by Chinese immigrants, many
people who thought they were coming for citizenship were imprisoned for months or
years while being interrogated. Some were sent back to China, many could not bear the
same and committed suicide) http://www.cetel.org/angel_poetry.html
5 minutes: Knowing the information we know now, how does it change the meaning of the
poem?
7 minutes: First-hand account of interrogation/holding process at Angel Island:
http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/asian-american/angel_island/chapter6.htm
15 minutes: Students in pairs will give each other a citizenship interview where they will
ask each other a series of interview questions that real Chinese immigrants were asked
upon arrival to Angel Island. Both partners will have a different order of questions. The
interviewer will write down their partners answers, and we will grade them as a class,
marking off the ones that students werent able to answer.
10 minutes: As a class: How many of you would have passed the test? Does this at all determine
if you make a good citizen or not? Why would they ask these kinds of questions?
5 Minutes: Closing- Is this a different picture of Angel Island than what you had before?

Week 1
Day 5 (Friday) workplace
Standards:
- By the end of grade 9, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and
poems, in the grades 910 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed
at the high end of the range. (9.RL.10)
- Analyze how an authors choices concerning how to structure a text, order events within
it (e.g., parallel plots), and manipulate time (e.g., pacing, flashbacks) create such effects
as mystery, tension, or surprise. (9-10.RL.5)
Objectives:
Students will be able to interpret the text The Jungle by reading aloud and analyzing as a class.
Goals:
Students will complete quick write
Students will read excerpt from The Jungle
Students will create a propaganda poster
2 minutes: Attendance
5 minutes: Students construct quick write: What was your first job, and if you have not had one,
where would you like your first job to be? What about that job makes you want it? What
is one job you would never want to work and why?

5 minutes: Discuss quick write, recording factors that would make someone want to work a job,
and factors that would make someone not want to work a job.
5 minutes: Before we begin, students will be told the context of the novel The Jungle. It was
written in 1906 by Upton Sinclair, who went undercover in working in the meatpacking
plants of the Chicago stockyard (meatpacking district) where many immigrants held jobs.
15 minutes: Read excerpt from The Jungle, describing the work place. Stop every three lines
are so to discuss what is happening/what the passage is describing.
Chapter 9
There were the men in the pickle rooms, for instance, where old Antanas had gotten his death;
scarce a one of these that had not some spot of horror on his person. Let a man so much as scrape
his finger pushing a truck in the pickle rooms, and he might have a sore that would put him out
of the world; all the joints in his fingers might be eaten by the acid, one by one. Of the butchers
and floorsmen, the beef-boners and trimmers, and all those who used knives, you could scarcely
find a person who had the use of his thumb; time and time again the base of it had been slashed,
till it was a mere lump of flesh against which the man pressed the knife to hold it. The hands of
these men would be criss- crossed with cuts, until you could no longer pretend to count them or
to trace them. They would have no nails, they had worn them off pulling hides; their knuckles
were swollen so that their fingers spread out like a fan. There were men who worked in the
cooking rooms, in the midst of steam and sickening odors, by artificial light; in these rooms the
germs of tuberculosis might live for two years, but the supply was renewed every hour. There
were the beef-luggers, who carried two-hundred-pound quarters into the refrigerator-cars; a
fearful kind of work, that began at four o'clock in the morning, and that wore out the most
powerful men in a few years. There were those who worked in the chilling rooms, and whose
special disease was rheumatism; the time limit that a man could work in the chilling rooms was
said to be five years. There were the wool-pluckers, whose hands went to pieces even sooner
than the hands of the pickle men; for the pelts of the sheep had to be painted with acid to loosen
the wool, and then the pluckers had to pull out this wool with their bare hands, till the acid had
eaten their fingers off. There were those who made the tins for the canned meat; and their hands,
too, were a maze of cuts, and each cut represented a chance for blood poisoning. Some worked at
the stamping machines, and it was very seldom that one could work long there at the pace that
was set, and not give out and forget himself and have a part of his hand chopped off. There were
the "hoisters," as they were called, whose task it was to press the lever which lifted the dead
cattle off the floor. They ran along upon a rafter, peering down through the damp and the steam;
and as old Durham's architects had not built the killing room for the convenience of the hoisters,
at every few feet they would have to stoop under a beam, say four feet above the one they ran on;
which got them into the habit of stooping, so that in a few years they would be walking like
chimpanzees. Worst of any, however, were the fertilizer men, and those who served in the
cooking rooms. These people could not be shown to the visitor, for the odor of a fertilizer man
would scare any ordinary visitor at a hundred yards, and as for the other men, who worked in
tank rooms full of steam, and in some of which there were open vats near the level of the floor,
their peculiar trouble was that they fell into the vats; and when they were fished out, there was
never enough of them left to be worth exhibiting, sometimes they would be overlooked for
days, till all but the bones of them had gone out to the world as Durham's Pure Leaf Lard!

20 minutes left: Students will take a scene from the excerpt and use the descriptions to create a
propaganda poster advocating for better working conditions (will lead us into immigrant
propaganda segment). It will need to include a slogan as well. We will do a quick review of
propaganda for this assignment, but will dive into it the next day.

Unit Calendar
Sunday

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Day 1:
Introduction to unit
(poll everywhere),
Previous knowledge
brainstorm about
Angel Island,
Chinese exclusion
act, predict how Act
will affect Chinese
immigrants coming
to U.S

Day 2:
Angel Island poems,
view interrogation
holding process,
citizenship test
activity.
-Introduce major
writing assignment
(interview/genealog
y report)

Day 3:
Ellis Island:
-Comparing and
contrasting
experiences of those
at Ellis Island vs.
those at Angel Island.
-the film "Island of
Hope-Island of
Tears" (1989) (the
28-minute
documentary is
available on youtube,
but we will watch
small parts. ---Talk
about the sad side
of Ellis Island (the
Sad Side is a
nickname for a part
of Ellis Island).
-Venn diagram in
groups, on poster
with pictures.

Day 4:
Irish Immigration &
the Potato Famine:
Anti-Irish
movement

Day 5:
Workplace
conditions for
immigrants:
excerpt from The
Jungle,
Students create
their own posters
advocating for
better working
conditions which
will lead us into
next weeks antiimmigrant
propaganda
segment

Day 7:
View and discuss
anti-immigrant
propaganda in early
1900s.
Do anti-Immigrant
attitudes still exist
today? Read article
Anti-immigrantHate Coming From
Everyday
Americans on
usnews.com

Day 8:
Illegal immigration:
why is this the only
kind we talk about?
Youtube clip
Political debate on
immigration

Day 9:
Present day
immigration:
Students will pull
out a paper with a
current political
stance regarding
immigration. They
will have five
minutes to come up
with whether or not
they agree with that
statement, and must
try to convince their
partner to agree.

Day 10:

Day 12:
-Quick write: Pick a
topic from
yesterdays four
corners activity that
you felt strongly
about and write

Day 13:
-Work day for either
Interview Report or
the presentation
aspect

Day 14:
Interview Report
Presentations

Day 15:
Interview Report
Presentations

(full lesson plan

above)

Day 6:
Students will walk
into class and we
will pretend as
though we are
working in a factory
as the immigrant
workers did.
Students will pass
books down the seat
rows in a certain
order (assembly
line) and if one
person makes a
mistake, the whole
group must start
over.
Day 11:
-Quick write: How
have your
perspectives on
immigration
changed as we are
nearing the end of

(full lesson plan

above)

Account from antiIrish

Excerpt from
Emigrants and
Exiles

(full lesson plan

above)

Present day
immigration
continued

Saturday

this unit? What

were some new
things that youve
learned?
-4 Corners activity
(strongly agree,
agree, disagree,
strongly agree in
corners). Statements
such as we need to
tighten our borders
or attitudes
towards immigrants
are not as negative
now as they were in
the past or Acts
such as the Chinese
Exclusion Act
would never happen
again in the future
and students will
pick corner
depending on their
beliefs. Students
will be asked to
share why they
chose certain sides.

about why you

agreed or disagreed
(will give students
who didnt speak the
day before to share)
-Checking off on
interview/report to
make sure that
students have either
asked interview
questions or done
the research.
-Discuss similarities
students are
beginning to see in
their reports
compared to the
stories of
immigrants that we
have talked about.

Citizenship Interview (based off of Leong Sems interview)

You and your partner have both received a copy of interview questions. It is based off of
questions from a real interview that a man from China had to complete as he tried to become a
citizen. On your paper, you will be writing down your PARTNERS answers as you ask them.
For example, for question number 1, you will ask your partner What is your name? then write
their answer on the line. The person that is being interviewed should not be writing anything
down, only speaking.
1. What is your name?
2. How many doors does your home have?
3. Who lives opposite of your house?
4. Describe the people in that house.

5. Are there any children in the home?

6. What are the exact ages of the people in the house?
7. How many houses are on your street?
8. When you exit your house and turn right, who lives in the farthest house on the street?
9. How long have they lived there?
10. Who lives three houses to the left?
11. What is their occupation?
12. Do you know any other neighbors by name?
13. Where is their house?
14. What are their names and ages?

Interview Assignment
For this writing assignment, you will interview someone you know (can be a family
member, a friend, a friends family member etc.) who is an immigrant. For this option, if for
example your grandmother was born in America but her mother was an immigrant, and your
grandmother could answer all of the interview questions about her, you may do that as well.
Whoever you chose to interview, run it by me for approval and guidance first to make sure you
are on the right track. You will be telling their story. You will conduct the interview asking the
questions below, and turn it into a paper that includes all of the information below in detail. Also
be sure to include how you know the person you are interviewing. Below the interview
questions, there are a series of reflection questions that you will respond to in your paper.
On the last two days of the unit, we will do quick presentations telling the persons story
to the rest of the class. For this you may use notecards with your information on it, or you may
use a PowerPoint with images.
1. What country or place did you migrate from?
2. What is your personal background? (schooling, hometown, etc.)
3. How old were you when you migrated?
4. What were the reasons for migrating?
5. Describe in detail the actual process of migrating.
6. How were you treated during the migration process?
7. How were you treated by others after coming to America?
8. What were some of the biggest challenges you faced during this process?
9. Are you still facing any of these challenges today?
10. How is life for you currently? (progress report)
11. Are you happy that you came to America?

12. Has it been what you had expected before arriving?

List of links used to guide my unit:

https://www.immigrationdirect.com/ellis-island.jsp
http://www.schumachercargo.com/blog/the-hands-that-built-america/
http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/famine/america.htm
http://www.cetel.org/angel_poetry.html
http://immigration.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000845
https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=47&page=transcript
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/07/24/anti-immigrant-hate-coming-from-everydayamericans
http://herb.ashp.cuny.edu/items/show/1632
Other links are included in full lesson plans