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Unit Title: Immigration TEACHER RESOURCES IMMIGRATION UNIT, Fuccillo, Della Paolera et al.
Prompts for Immigrant Diary writing exercises or dramatic improvisation:
Prompt #1: Imagine that it is the year 1924. You've just arrived in Ellis Island in New York City. You only know a few words in English. You are frightened but also excited. Then, someone grabs your bag with everything you brought to this foreign land, including the little money you have. Now you wonder whether you made the right decision to leave that old familiar place called home. Describe your experiences during your first week in your newly adopted country. Some of these experiences may be humorous, others sad, frightening, strange. How do you feel about the things that happen to you? How can you help yourself? Is there anyone to turn to for help during your first week in this strange, new place? Be creative and imaginative in explaining how you started your new life in America.
Prompt #2: Imagine that you have been approved to proceed through customs, but your brother was found to have a disease, detained, and then sent back to Ireland. Write a letter to your brother at home describing what new trials you've been through in your first week. Write about where you are living, where you think you might get work, who you've met so far.
Prompt #3: Imagine that you are miserably homesick for your family in (country). Compare and contrast your current (American) environment with what you remember of your home country as an entry in your journal.
Prompt #4: Imagine that you are a thief, convicted in your homeland, who escaped on a freighter to America. You have eluded the law at home, but now what? Create a new identity for yourself and pass yourself off as this new person as you go through the paces at Ellis Island. Describe the events in your journal.
Prompt #5: Imagine that your trunk has been lost en route. You must describe everything in it to an immigration officer. Write up the exchange in your diary.
Prompt #6: Imagine that you have now been in the United States for one year. Write a diary entry on day one, day 100, and now, showing how your life has changed. Are you working? Where? Have you met anyone you feel especially close to? Have you hooked up with relatives you'd never met before and what are they like? Can you get around without help? How's your English?
Prompt #7: Imagine that you are an eleven-year-old immigrant from (country) and you have just spent your first week in an American school. The kids there are teasing you terribly, and yesterday you were involved in a fight on the way home from school. Write how you feel about this new "land of opportunity" in a diary entry.
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