Student Readiness and Background

As previously mentioned I believe that this unit will be of particular interest because of the fact that immigration is such a relevant topic in many of their lives. I am hoping this will give the students some prior knowledge. I recognize that many of the students will not know the official steps required to immigrate therefore I hope they will still be engaged in the topic when they realize there are gaps in their knowledge. These gaps will hopefully stir up their curiosity and question.

A learning community strength which my class has had all year, but will have the opportunity to really shine in during this unit, is my classes ability to work in groups. We have three students who struggle to work in groups, but with the right groupings these students are usually able to be productive and slowly grow over time. Taking this into account I will rely on student support to scaffold most of my students and further their learning and collaboration.

I will be asking the students to participate and complete a variety of activities. The students are ready to complete these activities because they have used these platforms previously. For example I will be asking the students to complete letters as a form off reflection and historical empathy, this is a format which they have used previously this year. If they are not comfortable with this type of format the first time they will have other opportunities in this unit to practice. Another activity which the students have background in is Clips. This is a relatively new platform in our school, but because the students have been using IPads for so many years and we have completed mini projects with the programs in CIA I believe they will be ready to create a culminating assessment on this platform.

Student Needs

Lessons 1, 2 and 4 should be very accessible for my students without a large amount of scaffolding. I will be doing most of the “work” in the beginning parts of this unit. During these lessons the students will be obtaining and clarifying their firm foundation about what immigration is and what it involves.

I will never ask the students to complete an assignment that I do not first model. When given longer ( one handwritten page) writing assignments the students will be provided with a word bank and prompting questions. The students expectations will be listed in the directions.

We do have students who often become overwhelmed or distracted. In order to support these friends I will be breaking down each assignments into steps for them to follow. Most steps will be baby steps, or the screen (slide) they are looking at will only have one question. My hope is that this will allow them to not become overwhelmed and instead take each thing one step at a time.

Group work and listening to directions will be important and a particular challenge in the remaining lessons. In the simulation lesson students will need to follow directions in order to get through the multiple stations and they will need to be relatively independent because there will not be a teacher standing right next to them each step of the process. In order to support them I will go over each station prior to releasing them into the simulation. The direction will be written in multiple places along the way. Finally, the students will be in family groups to support them. As for the other lessons, the students will almost always have a partner to ask a question to if they are confused. Most often the students will be producing their own product, but working in pairs or as a group as a place of support. This will allow them to grow in independence, but still provide them with support.

As for the interview based  lessons I will be sending home a letter to parents explaining to them the entire project. For some our students this will give a support level at home that I can not provide for them in school (meaning one to one). I recognize that some students will not have parents that are immigrants and therefore can not support them in this way. I will have an alternate video interview for them to take notes off of.

When creating their Clips script I will provide all of the students with broken down slides.The students will be asked to use bullet points to prepare a script in order to practice note taking, while also saving time. For students who I think this will be confusing to, I will be providing them with a set of slides which has a fill in the blank script in order to support their progress and direct their synthesis. In result to the scaffolding of the slides, the making of the Clips should go relatively quickly because all the students need to do is transfer their information into Clips and read their script.