1. Immigration and Citizenship Lesson 6 – Welcome to America

2. Objective  Students will develop a sense of empathy with the experiences of immigrants who came to America.  Describe contributions of cultural groups to our state and nation.

3. Vocabulary  population – the number of people in one place  debate – a discussion where one person shares how he or she feels about something and then the other person shares why he or she may or may not agree with that viewpoint

4. Review  Why would immigrants come to the United States of America?  Why is the Statue of Liberty important?  What does our national motto, “e pluribus unum,” mean?  What was Ellis Island like?

5. Welcome to America  After Ellis Island immigrants left on a ferry to New York City. What do you think happened to the immigrants in New York City?

6.  Many came to America hoping to buy a little land and start a farm, but most were so poor that they had to stop and look for work in cities such as New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and San Francisco.

7.  Immigrants often took low paying jobs no one else wanted. They sold newspapers or washed clothes. They did the backbreaking work of building the canals and railroads.  Many Irish immigrants worked to build the Erie Canals.  Many Chinese immigrants helped build the Transcontinental Railroad. Erie Canal Transcontinental Railroad.

8.  In hot factories, women and children worked at spinning cloth or sewing clothes.  Immigrants were often treated badly. Some Americans who had been in the country for many years did not like different languages, religions, or customs of the new immigrants. These Americans forgot that there was a time when their ancestors had been immigrants, too.

9.  Even though many immigrants were not welcome, they worked hard and made a better life for themselves in America. Some saved money to buy a little land to farm or to open their own business in the cities.  They built homes. They educated their children, and they watched their sons and daughters become successful people. They became our the country’s teachers, professors, writers, businessmen, nurses, and doctors. They became our newest and proudest citizens.

10. What have we learned so far?  Why do you think immigrants mostly went to large cities instead of small towns or farm areas.  Big cities would have more people from the immigrant’s homeland who could speak the same language and help them. There would also be more jobs in large cities.  Why did Americans sometimes treat the new immigrants badly?  Some Americans did not like the immigrants because they spoke a different language, wore different clothes, and sometimes had different beliefs.

11. Immigrant Children  Some immigrant children were forced to work in terrible conditions. In factories, mines and mills. Children did have to work hard but, life wasn’t always hard. They also had time to play.  Immigrants often had to invent things to use to play sports, such as a broomstick and a hard rubber ball for stickball  What would you have used to play other sports, such as basketball or football?

12. Video  Watch An American Tail by Universal City Studios. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=it23TqfLo R8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=it23TqfLo R8  Write or illustrate on one side of a white sheet of copy paper, the good things that Fievel experiences in America.  Then on the back, they write or illustrate the bad things that Fievel experiences in America.