Unit+Introduction

We introduce the year-long unit with the book, One Green Apple by Eve Bunting. After discussion of the main character's challenges, we take our first field trip, we schedule it to an apple orchard. After returning, we use Little Bird Tales in Religion and give the students the creative reign to select their own presentation method, whether it be a prose, poetry, prayer, a drawing, a paragraph, and so on, with a response to the flower within the apple or the fact that apple seeds from an apple won't necessarily result in the same type of apple.

Using Story Jumper, the students will work in small groups to create an epilogue to One Green Apple in Language Arts.

In Social Studies, the students will write reflections in Linoit and reflect on culture.

Rubrics will be used to assess all three activities.

We follow up the unit with the following video.

media type="custom" key="12437552" @http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2gjh9_coming-to-america_music

We discuss the video and ask, "What is the video about?" This question leads to the discussion of immigration. The teacher asks for a show of hands of how many people are of Native American ancestry. Everyone whose hand is down is an immigrant. We talk about how immigrants contributed to our country and how immigrants have brought their cultures - food, clothing, music, art, religion, holidays, customs, stories, games, architecture, and so on, to the United States.

We then watch media type="custom" key="12437572" http://www.history.com/topics/states/videos#faces-of-america and discuss why people immigrated and why people continue to immigrate.

Finally, we give an overview of the thematic unit that the students will be studying in all of their classes and field trips. The culminating activity at the end of the school year is one where the students will go through the process of immigration of past and present.

