Immigration Simulation

Next week (Thursday, December 12) we will participate in a simulation of the immigration experience. In social studies, we are studying the Gilded Age as it transitioned to the Progressive Era. Studying immigration is an important part of this study so we usually take a few weeks to look at immigration and how it affected the development of the United States becoming a world power. The experience is supposed to simulate the emotions, feelings, and perspectives of the immigrants who sailed to the United States.

Each student is playing the role of either an immigrant or an Ellis Island processor; characters were drawn randomly. Your child is expected to research that particular immigrant's background (characters are fictional) and nationality in order to better portray, and understand, that particular immigrant. Processors will be doing the same thing - getting to know their character and their background. This will influence how characters interact and how decisions are made. As your child gets to know their character, my expectation is that they show up Thursday prepared to portray their character. While dressing as their character is not mandatory, it adds to the experience and helps your child better portray their character. If they decide to do some dressing as their character, I'll leave that part up to you and your child.

Just for this week, we could use cereal boxes. The cardboard makes perfect name tags for those playing immigrants and is sturdier than regular paper or card stock.

Passing of the Cans is this Friday. We ask that you bring in non-perishable items to be donated. I believe Center Connections has a nice list of items needed. We are also collecting items for The Women's Shelter in downtown Columbia. Items needed for this group are also found in the Center Connections.

The class is also looking for small, recycled containers we will use for a math project. The size of the item should fit into a brown paper bag (we don't need actual brown paper bags). Anything bigger such as liter soda bottles will not work. We are using the containers to study volume and will use the containers to compare the volume of different objects. We will put together items of similar size, fill them with rice, and compare the volume of these objects by comparing which items needed more rice to fill them.