SAMPLE UNIT PLAN: IMMIGRATION NARRATIVES

Jillian Mattern

Background
Intended Class and Students:
This unit is intended for use with an SEI Humanities class at the high school level. The class
consists of fifteen 9th- and 10th-grade students (ages 14-17) classified at WIDA level 3. All
students are heritage speakers of Spanish.
Brief Description of the Unit:
The lessons provided here are taken from a longer sub-unit on human rights and
immigration, which in turn is part of a broader immigration unit. During this sub-unit, students
will examine the UN Declaration of Human Rights and the push and pull factors that contribute
to global migration, and will draw connections between the two. They will also discuss the
diversity of US immigrants’ stories and the potential impact of sharing these stories with the
broader public. Having read several immigration narratives through the lens of human rights and
push- and pull-factors, each student will interview an immigrant about their story and write an
immigration narrative about that person to share with the school community.

Stage 1: Desired Results of the Unit

MA Curriculum Frameworks Standards:
• Anchor Standards for Reading 2: Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their
development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.
• 9–10 RL in History and Social Science 4: Determine the meaning of general academic and
domain-specific words and phrases as they are used in a text, including vocabulary describing
political, social, or economic aspects of history/social studies.
• 9–10 SL 1: Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions . . . with
diverse partners on grades 9–10 topics, texts, and issues, building on others’ ideas and expressing
their own clearly and persuasively.
• 9–10 WS 2: Write informative/explanatory texts . . . to examine and convey complex ideas,
concepts, and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization,
and analysis of content.
• 9–10 WS 4: Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and
style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.

Understandings: Students will understand that…

• Various political, economic, social and environmental factors contribute to migration around
the world.
• The concept of inalienable human rights can be used as a framework to interpret some
motivations for immigration and to judge its outcomes.
• Other immigrants have different stories and experiences than students or their families, but
commonalities can also be found.

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Content Objectives of the Unit:
• Students will be able to identify and describe
human rights, push and pull factors that contribute
to global immigration, and the relationships
between these two concepts.
• Students will be able to draw connections
between large-scale social concepts/trends and
personal stories, and identify differences and
commonalities among these stories.
• Students will be able to analyze a text for
purpose, main components, and language features.
• Students will be able to extract key information
from longer notes/recordings and organize it into a
cohesive piece of writing using a graphic organizer.
Language Objectives of the Unit:
• Students will be able to use target
vocabulary words to describe and
discuss immigration push/pull factors,
through both speaking and writing.
• Students will be able to identify main
ideas, important supporting details, and
redundant or less important parts of a
text, and will be able to use these
judgments to write summaries of the
text.
• Students will be able to use interview
notes/recordings to write an immigration
narrative in English.

Stage 2: Assessment Evidence

Forms of Assessment:
listening to output during pair/class discussion; reading output on whiteboards and in graphic
organizers; listening for target vocabulary; observing sorts during word study lesson; reading exit
tickets; reading brainstorms and drafts in Google Classroom; reading final pieces and listening to
oral presentations

Stage 3: Learning Plan

Lesson 1 (not included here): Students will discuss the concept of a “right” and talk about what
rights they have as high school students. They will then examine the Teaching Tolerance version
of the UNDHR. They will group the articles of the declaration based on general topic, and will
post articles by topic around the classroom.
Lesson 2: Students (who have had a basic introduction to US immigration before this sub-unit)
will brainstorm push and pull factors contributing to immigration and read an article outlining
common push and pull factors in more detail. This lesson has a vocabulary focus; g
Lesson 3: Students will connect the previous two lessons by identifying connections between
human rights and push/pull factors. They will then identify these factors in real immigrant
narratives. They will also practice the strategy of summarizing and share jigsaw-style summaries.
Lesson 4 (not included here): This shortened-schedule day will be devoted to word abilities
instruction, focusing on the “-tion” derivation which appears frequently in this unit’s readings.
Lesson 5 (not included here): Students will return to the immigration narratives, thinking about
purpose and structure. They will look at a model narrative that was read previously and identify
main components. They will then write interview questions intended to elicit information about
these main components of a new person’s immigration story; outside of class time, each person
will interview an immigrant they know. (Students will have the option to interview school
personnel who are immigrants during lunch or after school.)

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Lesson 6: Students will examine language features of the example immigration narrative. They
will use graphic organizers to extract information from their interview records, organize it, and
consider appropriate language features. They will have time to begin drafting.
Students will have an additional class period to write and one to share their narratives.

LESSON 1 (2nd in Unit): PUSH/PULL FACTORS

Stage 1: Desired Results of the Lesson

Content Objectives of the Lesson:
• Students will identify and describe “push and pull factors” that cause immigration around the
world.
• Students will find information in a text and use it to build on their own ideas.
Language Objectives of the Lesson:
• Students will use new vocabulary words to communicate with each other. They will use the
words to describe immigration push and pull factors, through both speaking and writing.

Stage 2: Assessment Evidence to be Used

Forms of Assessment:
The teacher will be able to assess students throughout the lesson by paying attention to their oral
and written output. She will assess students’ current knowledge and ability to express it based on
what they write and share using their whiteboards, and again during class discussion after the
reading. She will listen to determine students’ ability to use new vocabulary words in sentence
frames, and will be able to see whether they are accurately highlighting push and pull factor
information in the reading. The final exit ticket sentences will further demonstrate students’
ability to use a new word to communicate about the subject matter.

Stage 3: Learning Plan

Learning Activities (Tuesday schedule; class lasts 1 hour and 10 minutes):
I. Warm-up (4 minutes): Students talk to someone sitting next to them for two minutes about
what they remember from yesterday’s class. They may speak in any language, but the teacher
asks them to be prepared to share out in English. A couple of students share out.
II. Push-pull brainstorm (20 minutes)
1. The teacher explains that they are now going to return to the topic of immigration,
introduced last week. She asks the students to think about reasons someone might want
to leave the country they’re in, and reasons they might want to live in a different one.
After the class has provided a few examples, the teacher explains that we can call reasons
to leave somewhere “push factors” and reasons to go somewhere “pull factors.” She
writes these two terms on the board and draws a line between them, and writes one class-
provided example under each.
2. Students divide into groups of three or four, and each group receives a 3x4-foot
whiteboard. They make two columns for push and pull factors resembling those the

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 teacher drew on the board. Groups brainstorm more push and pull factors and write them
on their whiteboards. Students are encouraged to be specific and may use any language;
they are encouraged to use Spanish when they aren’t sure how to express an idea in
English.
3. The class comes back together and each group shares. The teacher adds new
contributions to the columns on the board, in English.
4. The teacher explains that later in class, students will build on these ideas by reading an
article about common push and pull factors. First, they will learn some vocabulary that
will help them to comprehend the reading and express their ideas about push and pull
factors more precisely.
III. Vocabulary teaching (15 minutes) (all words, definitions, sample sentences, and sentence
frames will be projected on the board)
1. persecution
a) The teacher shows “persecution” and students pronounce it.
b) The teacher asks students to think back to their unit on the “true story of
Thanksgiving,” and tell her why the Pilgrims decided to leave England. Students
should answer that it was because they wanted to practice their religion.
c) The teacher shows a sentence: “The Pilgrims left England because of religious
persecution.” The teacher asks students what they think “persecution” means in this
sentence.
d) The teacher gives a definition; students provide a Spanish equivalent.
e) The teacher points out similarity to the word “discrimination” (which students have
been using recently in their discussion of human rights) and asks students what they
think the difference is. She explains that persecution denotes severity and/or
ongoingness.
2. displaced/displacement
a) The teacher shows “displaced” and students pronounce it.
b) Again drawing on previous units, the teacher shows example the sentence “60,000
Native Americans were displaced from their homes and sent on the Trail of Tears”
and asks students to guess the meaning of “displace.”
c) The teacher gives a definition, and points out similarity to previous vocabulary word
“remove.”
d) The teacher asks students if they see a word within the word “displaced.” When they
provide “place,” she asks how that relates to the meaning of “displaced.”
e) The teacher also introduces the nominal form “displacement” (which will also appear
in today’s reading) and helps students understand its function by comparing
“displace” and “displacement” to “remove” and “removal.”
f) Student practice: The teacher asks students to brainstorm some reasons someone
might be displaced from their home (fire, flood, persecution, termites, etc.). They
then turn-and-talk to express these reasons using the word “displaced” in a sentence
frame: “People can be displaced by ___.”
3. availability
a) The teacher shows “availability” and students pronounce it.

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 b) The teacher gives a sentence and definition, and students provide a Spanish
equivalent.
c) The teacher explains that the word is often used to talk about goods (like foods) or
jobs.
d) Student practice: After the teacher provides a few examples, students turn and talk to
create sentences using a sentence frame “There is high/low availability of ___ in
___.”
4. scarcity
a) The teacher shows “scarcity” and students pronounce it.
b) The teacher shows an example sentence and explains that this word is like an
opposite of “availability,” and asks students to explain what they think it means.
c) The teacher gives a definition and students provide a Spanish equivalent.
d) The teacher points out that the article “a” is used with scarcity.
e) Student practice: After the teacher provides a few examples, students turn and talk
using the same model as above: “There is a scarcity of ___ in ___.”
5. reunification
a) Teacher shows “reunification” and students pronounce it.
b) The teacher asks students to explain (in Spanish) the meaning of unificar. Then, she
asks what the prefix “re-” means (giving familiar examples if necessary), and what
reunificar and reunificación mean.
c) The teacher gives an English definition and two example sentences. She explains that
the word is usually used in the context of countries/regions or families.
6. prompt (v)
a) The teacher shows “prompt” and students pronounce it.
b) The teacher asks if students already know any definitions for prompt; if anyone
mentions other meanings, the teacher explains that this one is different.
c) The teacher gives sentences and definition, and students provide a Spanish
equivalent.
d) Student practice: Students turn and talk to use a sentence frame (“I would be
prompted to help my friend with her homework if ____”) and optional word bank.
IV. Reading (20 minutes): Students receive “Root Causes of Migration.” All students read the
introduction and examine the graphic; one half of the class reads about political and economic
factors; the other half reads about environmental and social factors. As they read, students use
one color pen or highlighter to mark what they identify as push factors, and another for pull
factors. They read and mark their own copies but may consult with neighbors.
V. Refining push/pull list (8 minutes): The class comes back together to discuss what they read,
using new knowledge to edit the collaborative push/pull list on the board. They can add ideas
from the article, consolidate, or re-word. The teacher challenges them to use the new vocabulary
words, prompting when necessary. The teacher or a student volunteer acts as scribe. (After class,
the teacher types up the list so that students can use it the next day.)
VI. Exit ticket (3 minutes): Before leaving, each student writes a sentence about something they
learned today, using at least one of the new vocabulary words.

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Supplementary Materials Used: whiteboards and markers for students, vocabulary slides
(Appendix A), copies of “Root Causes of Migration” (Appendix B), paper for exit tickets

LESSON 2 (3rd in Unit): RELATING PUSH-PULL FACTORS AND HUMAN RIGHTS

TO IMMIGRATION NARRATIVES

Stage 1: Desired Results of the Lesson

Content Objectives of the Lesson:
• Students will be able to explain the relationships between push-pull factors and human rights.
• Students will be able to identify push-pull factors and other important parts of real immigrants’
stories.
• Students will be able to identify main ideas, important supporting details, and less important
parts of a text. Students will use this skill to write summaries of the text.

Language Objectives of the Lesson:

• Students will be able to write short summaries of paragraphs of a text.
• Students will be able to share their summaries through speaking, and will be able get
information from other students’ summaries.

Stage 2: Assessment Evidence to be Used

Forms of Assessment:
The teacher will be able to see if students are making connections between push-pull factors and
human rights by observing where they place their sticky notes and listening to them discuss their
choices. She will assess students’ input to the whole-class summarizing activity, and will
circulate the room to see if students are reading and summarizing successfully in their small
groups. She will check graphic organizers for successful completion at the end of class.

Stage 3: Learning Plan

Learning Activities (class length: 1 hour 25 minutes [Thursday double-block, with independent
reading time subtracted])
I. Connection to yesterday’s lesson (15 minutes):
1. Mapping push-pull factors to human rights: The teacher projects her typed record of
yesterday’s push-pull factor list onto the board and asks a couple students to refresh
everyone’s memory on what they learned. She then explains that many of these factors
represent a violation or fulfillment of rights described in the UNDHR. She writes one of
the push or pull factors on a sticky note and models thinking out loud to match it to an
UNDHR article, and sticks it to the place in the room where its corresponding UNDHR
article is posted (articles have been grouped by topic and posted to walls in a previous
class). She does another example with student input. Then, students work in pairs to
write the remaining push-pull factors on sticky notes and post them around the room.
2. A couple of pairs share out about where they posted their sticky notes and why. Other
students can agree or disagree with their reasoning.

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II. Introduction to summarizing (6 minutes):
1. The teacher asks students if they have ever gotten to the end of a page of reading, only to
realize they have no idea what they just read and couldn’t tell somebody if asked. She
suggests stopping to summarize as a strategy to prevent this from happening!
2. The teacher asks students to describe what summarizing is and discuss what else it is
useful for. (Ensuring comprehension, taking useful notes [pointing out relationship
between annotating, which students have already discussed, and summarizing], teaching/
sharing with someone who didn’t read the same thing.)
3. The teacher reminds students that a paragraph/chunk of text usually includes some main
ideas, some other key details, and some repetitive or less important details, and asks the
students which parts should be included in a summary.
III. Modeling and Class Practice (15 minutes)
1. Modeling: The teacher projects on the board the push-pull article which students read
yesterday. The teacher reads the first paragraph out loud, and then thinks aloud while
summarizing it: She identifies main ideas, other important information, and redundant or
unimportant information, and then writes a summary of the main ideas in her own words.
She repeats the process with the second paragraph.
2. Whole-class work: Next, the entire class tries summarizing the next paragraph together.
The teacher continues to write on the board while students write on their copies of the
text. This time, instead of just verbally identifying important and unimportant
information, they also physically mark the text as they discuss: Teacher and students
identify and circle main ideas, underline other key details, and put Xs next to redundant
and unimportant parts. They develop summaries as a group. During this process, the
teacher points out additional elements of good summarizing, like getting rid of
unnecessary modifiers, describing lists with a single word or phrase, being generally
concise, etc.
3. Narrative example: The teacher tells students that they will be reading immigration
narratives in pairs or groups and summarizing them to share with the class. To ensure that
students do not have trouble applying summarizing skills to narrative texts, the class
summarizes the first part of an immigration narrative read at the beginning of the unit.
IV. Pair/group Work (25 minutes): Students divide into groups of 3-4 and one group of 5. Each
group is assigned an immigrant profile from https://immigrants.mndigital.org. Each profile
includes a short (2-5 minute) video with visuals and a voiceover, as well as a written transcript,
which each student will receive on paper (the teacher will have created paragraph breaks in the
printed transcript copies to facilitate easy summarizing). Students may watch the video and then
read the transcript, read and then watch, read along while listening, etc. — each group is free to
decide. Then they will summarize:
Pairs: Transcripts will be printed on one half of the page, while the other half has space
left for summarizing. At the end of each paragraph, the pair uses the symbols described
above to mark main ideas, supporting details, and unimportant information, and writes a
short summary in the space provided.
Small group instruction: While the other groups are working, the teacher works with a
group of five students who are known to struggle with conciseness and/or using their

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 own words. They will be doing basically the same exercise as the smaller groups, but
they will spend time discussing specific sub-strategies in more detail (for example, using
pronouns or other shorter referents to refer to subjects a second time, collapsing lists,
thinking of different words to paraphrase with, etc.).
V. Share-out (20 minutes): The class comes back together. Students receive graphic organizers
with the names of the profiled immigrants, a column for push-pull factors, a column for human
rights violated and/or fulfilled, and a column for any other interesting features of the story that
the student wants to note (for example, some stories include discussion of a value object from the
home country or the importance of a family member). Each group reads its summary. The other
students ask any clarifying questions and fill in their graphic organizers. The teacher clarifies
ahead of time that not all columns will apply to all stories (for example, some might mention pull
factors but not push factors, or might not clearly involve rights violations).
VI. Wrap-Up (5 minutes): The teacher asks students what commonalities and/or differences
they see among the narratives. Students turn-and-talk and then share out.

Supplementary Materials Used: student-generated push-pull factor list, sticky notes, projector,
“Root Causes of Immigration” (Appendix B), “Salahadin’s Immigration Narrative” (Appendix
C), immigration profile videos and printed immigration profile transcripts with space for
summary (Appendix D), graphic organizers for push-pull factors/human rights (Appendix E)

LESSON 3 (6th in Unit): WRITING IMMIGRATION NARRATIVES

Stage 1: Desired Results of the Lesson

Content Objectives of the Lesson:
• Students will be able to use interview notes/recordings to find the key information needed.
• Students will be able to use a graphic organizer to plan a piece of writing.
Language Objectives of the Lesson:
• Students will be able to identify language features appropriate for immigration narratives.
• Students will be able to write a draft of an immigration narrative in English.

Stage 2: Assessment Evidence to be Used

Forms of Assessment:
The teacher will circulate the room to see if students are successfully extracting information for
their graphic organizers, and assist as needed. Students’ participation during the whole-class
discussion of language features will serve as informal assessment. As students begin writing, the
teacher will be able to access their Google Documents to observe progress.

Stage 3: Learning Plan

Learning Activities (class length: 1 hour)
I. Warm-up (4 minutes): Students take a few minutes to share who they interviewed and
some of the main takeaways from the interview with a person sitting next to them.
II. Extracting Information (20 minutes)

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 1. The teacher asks a student volunteer to remind the class of the purpose and audience of
the narratives they will be writing. Then, the teacher refreshes the class’s memory on the
components of the narrative, projecting a graphic organizer on the board. The sets of
guiding questions which the narratives should answer are: [How was life before
immigration? What prompted her/him to immigrate?] [How was life when she/he first
arrived in the US?] [How is her/his life now?] [How are her/his rights fulfilled or not
fulfilled here? Is this different from in her/his former home?] [How does she/he feel
about the US and about the home country? What is her/his relationship to the home
country now?] Students have already practiced identifying these components of
immigration narratives, and noting them in a similar graphic organizer, in a previous
class.
2. The teacher asks students to use their notes/recordings of their interviews to write
relevant information in each box, reminding them that they can use information from
throughout the interview (not just from the interviewee’s answer to the most relevant
interview question) wherever it applies. She reminds them to write informally in note-
taking format. Students use Chromebooks to complete this task in Google Classroom.
III. Language Features (15 minutes)
1. Identifying language features: When most students have finished the first column of their
graphic organizers (students who finish early can share their products with each other),
students close their Chromebooks and come back together as a class. The teacher projects
a familiar example narrative on the board and explains that they will be examining the
kind of language it uses. As they go through the following steps, the teacher marks the
discussed words and phrases on the projected text.
a) The teacher points out that the narratives they have been reading are in the first
person, but they will be writing in the third person.
b) Tone/level of formality: The teacher asks students whether it sounds formal or casual,
how academic the words are, etc., and the class find examples.
c) Tense usage: The teacher asks students to identify where past and present tense are
used, and why.
d) Time indicators/connectors: Students look for words indicating time and causality
(so, when, now, one day, etc.). They brainstorm more that could be useful (before, x
years later, after, recently, etc.).
2. The teacher asks students to return to their graphic organizers. Together, the class looks
at each section and discusses which of the language features they have just discussed are
appropriate for that section. They type examples of appropriate language features for
each section into the column provided. (For example, for “How was life before
immigration? What prompted her/him to immigrate?,” they might write, “past tense,
when he lived…, before, then”)
IV. Drafting (20 minutes): Using their graphic organizers, students begin writing drafts of their
narratives. The teacher circulates the room and/or observes in Google Classroom, and assists as
needed.

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Supplementary Materials Used: projector; Chromebooks for students; graphic organizer in
Google Classroom (Appendix F); “Salahadin’s Immigration Narrative” (Appendix C); students
need notes and recordings from their interviews

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