Lesson by Tim Bailey
Essay by Grace Peña Delgado, University of California, Santa Cruz
Grade Level: 7–12
Number of Class Periods: 5
Primary Theme: Immigration and Migration
About This Lesson Plan Unit
In these five lessons, students will explore European and Asian immigration to the United States, the Great Migration, and deportation of Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They will examine paired visual and textual sources, including sources created at the time historical events took place and sources created to memorialize those events. Students’ comprehension will be assessed through activity sheets and an argumentative paragraph or essay.
Lesson Plan Authors: Tim Bailey
Historical Background Essay by: Grace Peña Delgado, University of California, Santa Cruz
Additional Information About This Unit
Common Core State Standards
Common Core State Standards
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.2: Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary of the source distinct from prior knowledge or opinions.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.7: Integrate visual information (e.g., in charts, graphs, photographs, videos, or maps) with other information in print and digital texts.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.9: Analyze the relationship between a primary and secondary source on the same topic.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.6-8.1.a: Write arguments focused on discipline-specific content. b. Introduce claim(s)about a topic or issue, acknowledge and distinguish the claim(s) from alternate or opposing claims, and organize the reasons and evidence logically.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.1: Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources, connecting insights gained from specific details to an understanding of the text as a whole.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.2: Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary that makes clear the relationships among the key details and ideas.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.7: Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in diverse formats and media (e.g., visually, quantitatively, as well as in words) in order to address a question or solve a problem.
Essential Questions
Essential Questions
What obstacles made it challenging to move in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries?
How did immigrants to the United States or migrants to northern and western states explain why a troublesome move was nonetheless appealing?
When people could not control when and where they moved, what else did they lose?
Documents
Documents
J. Keppler, “Welcome to All,” Puck, April 28, 1880
Excerpts from Aaron Domnitz, “Why I Left My Old Home and What I Have Accomplished in America” (1942)
An Immigrant’s Poem, Angel Island (1925): Choi Kyung Sik, “A Night at the Immigration Station”
“Testing an Asian Immigrant,” photograph taken at the Angel Island Immigration Station, San Francisco, 1931
Letter from Cleveland Gailliard to the Bethlehem Baptist Association, April 1, 1917
Jacob Lawrence, The Migration Series Panel No. 1: During World War I there was a great migration north by southern African Americans, 1940–1941
Letter from Pablo Guerrero to Los Angeles County, May 28, 1934, Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. Translated from Spanish to English by A. G. Rivera and found in Los Angeles County Decimal File