PBL Immigration: Coming to America

Follow this link to my project Social Studies/Theater lesson on:

Immigration: Coming To America
http://stu.westga.edu/~bthibau1/

Project Based Learning can be an invaluable tool in the classroom for improving not only student achievement, but engagement as well. The projects that students will participate in during this initiative integrate multiple content areas, maximizing instructional time. Project Based Learning helps students develop higher-order thinking skills and technological awareness that will benefit them as students and as future adults. At the conclusion of these activities, students will possess an understanding of United States history, which will be enhanced by their consideration of history from the perspective of those involved in it. Students will have also developed their writing skills and technological competence. These abilities will improve student success on standardized testing, and students will have become more engaged in the learning process.

In this particular lesson, children will write scenes for a class play about immigration based on the book, “What if your name was changed at Ellis Island” and write scripted monologues in the voices of their immigrant characters from their group selected countries. Each group of 4 will re-write a scene for the overall play of the story including each member of the group writing his/her own theater monologue about the reactions of coming to America based on the books characters.

The goals are to allow the children to: exercise their Language Art skills, demonstrate their knowledge gained from a social studies unit on immigrants and Ellis Island, interpret the book, present what they had learned about theater monologues and developing characters in theater, while practicing working in groups to accomplish a final goal. The children will conclude the project by creating a Microsoft Movie Maker Scrapbook of their character displaying technology skills introduced through the class with scripted monologue created using Microsoft Word.