Teaching about Immigration, Ellis Island and Today's Pilgrims

My class just finished an in depth author study of Patricia Polacco.

We learned how her family immigrated to the U.S. from Russia.

I read the book Coming to America to teach more about the immigration process.

Then we explored Scholastic's site on immigrants which includes video clips of immigrant children today as well as background on Ellis Island.

Finally, we connected Patricia Polacco's family history of being Russian immigrants to the novel Molly's Pilgrim. A video is available for the story too that we compared the book to.

View a video clip

To wrap up our pilgrim and immigration focus students made their own Molly's Pilgrim doll.

 

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Patricia Polacco Magic

Patricia Polacco is one of my favorite authors to use in the classroom.

She is such an engaging storyteller.  My class was riveted to this author study video today.

I plan to now have my students practice sharing a family story of their own with this assignment:

Which Patricia Polacco story is your favorite?


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Traditions and Patricia Polacco Author Study

My class loved reading Patricia Polacco's The Keeping Quilt the past two weeks. It's such a special story about the importance of family and traditions. Students completed their own family tradition quilt square too and were proud to share a piece of their heritage.

After reading The Keeping Quilt, I read aloud some of her other books: Babushka's Doll, Some Birthday, Chicken Sunday, Thunder Cake and the most touching of the bunch, The Junkyard Wonders                      

To show our appreciation for her talent as a wonderfully inspiring author students wrote thank you letters to Patricia Polacco today.  

My class was "Over the Top" excited when we received a letter in return from Patricia Polacco.

There's no better way to bring letter writing to life than this!

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