Lesson Plan for Secondary School Educators (Vocational class) Topic: Recent immigrants and their issues/problems Subject: English Time: six 45-minute class periods Background: multicultural classrooms, rising number of immigrants in the USA& Norway , promoting empathy

Specific objectives of my lesson plan 1.Students will be able to define terms such as illegal immigrant, immigration, migration, non-resident alien, resident alien 2.Students will be able to describe the experiences of immigrants 3.Students will reflect on personal emotions associated with being an immigrant 4.Students will be introduced to analyze a poem about immigration 5.Students will be guided to read excerpts from a graphic novel (describing the traumatic experiences of immigrants) 6.Students will be encouraged to empathize with immigrants facing isolation and alienation 7.Students will be made to recognize social, economic, and linguistic issues immigrants face in their daily life 8.Students will be able to get to know problem novels dealing with recent immigration

Materials -poem by Noy Chou You Have to Live in Somebody’s Else’s Country to Understand -excerpts from different novels -immigration statistics -LCD projector ( displaying pictures and graphics) -scrapbook

Procedure The lesson will be broken down into 3 parts: Part 1-Working with pictures and statistics or laying the factual background. Part 2-Poetry reading and discussion (or literature encompassing immigration issues as themes)or the manifestation of immigration issues in the arts and literature. Part 3-Fiction reading- excerpts from several books or appreciation of immigration-based literature or personal immersion into the issues through immigration-based literature.

Part 1 1.Hand out the pictures (Appendix 1) and put students in pairs and later in bigger groups. Let students share their first thoughts. Pictures can be also displayed on the projector if you have the necessary devices. 2.Possible questions to be asked : What can you see in the picture? How are these people? What do they do? What do they feel? What do their faces express? Are they happy? Are they sad? Where are they? Why do they protest? How would you describe the way they look? 3.Elicit vocabulary: illegal immigrant, immigration vs.migration, resident alien, non-resident alien 4.Have students look at the table (Appendix 2): Top Ten Foreign Countries – Foreign Born Population Among U.S. Immigrants.  

Part 2 1.Hand out the poem written by Noy Chou (Appendix 3). Invite one student to read the poem aloud to others. 2.Have students discuss and analyze the poem orally. Ask students to select the lines that strike them most. 3.Display these questions and encourage class discussion. Have you ever felt like an outsider? Have you ever been in a new environment where you didn’t necessarily fit in? How would you define an outsider? What groups and individuals are treated like outsiders in America and Norway? What are the possible results or consequences when people feel like outsiders in the country they live in? What did you learn from this experience and the poem that might help you to better understand the feelings of outsiders in the future? How would you feel if someone called you an outsider? How might you act differently toward someone when you recognize that s/he might be feeling like an outsider? 4. Teacher talks about his own experiences related to her own immigration and invites students to ask questions.

Part 3 1.Ask students if they know what a graphic novel is. Ask for examples. 2.Hand in the copies of American Born Chinese (Appendix 4) to each student. Let students flip through the book. Ask what their first impression is. 3.Distribute excerpts (Appendix 4)from the novel Just Like Us showing problems the main character faces after moving to a new neighborhood. 4.Divide students into groups of 4. Students need to find out/underline social, economic, linguistic issues in their excepts. All the findings are to be noted down on a separate piece of paper. 5.Each group presents his findings in front of others.

Final Product/Assignment Teacher will be responsible for the purchase of a 30 loose  page notebook that students are going to use at their final stage of the lesson with instructions for them to contribute any opinions, experiences, poems, short stories, collage pictures, feelings,  book reviews etc. that they feel are relevant to the series of lessons. The loose pages are for practical purpose. Each student will be given a loose page to work on so students can work on their pages simultaneously at their own pace without waiting for the scrapbook to come to them next. At the end of the exercise, the teacher will collect all these pages and bind them into a "class scrapbook". This "joint scrapbook "will then be displayed in class for all students to peruse.

Bibliography Alvarez, J.(2009). Return to Sender. Knopf: New York. Eggers, D. (2006). What is the what: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng. Vintage Books: New York. Thorpe, H. (2009). Just Like US. The True Story of Four Mexican Girls Coming of Age in America. Scribner: New York. Yang, G.L. (2006). American Born Chinese. First Second: New York and London.