Family Immigration History Research Project

Created Feb. 7, 2024 by Kathryn Shaughnessy

NHPRC QIH Assignment Title:

Family Immigration History Research Project

NOTE: This assignment was created by the participant educator named below as part of the Queens Immigration History curriculum development project funded by a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission division of the National Archives (grant #DH-50022-16).  For more information on this grant project, please visit the Queens Immigration History website  at https://queensimmigrationhistory.wordpress.com   

NHPRC QIH Assignment Creator

Created by NHPRC Teacher Participant/Creator Marc Shoichet (C1, July 2017 – June 2018).  Mr. Shoichet has been a social studies teacher at in New York City public schools for 15 years. He is currently teaching at Martin Van Buren High School and before that he taught at Murry Bergtraum High School. He is the lead teacher for 10th grade Global history and before that he was the lead teacher for 12th Grade Government and Economics. He currently teaches a co-enrollment Government class through Syracuse University and has also taught an co-enrollment Sociology class through Syracuse University.

Summary/ Description Overview:

Created by NHPRC Teacher Participant/Creator Marc Shoichet for Grade 10 Global History Course; Adaptable to other grades.  During the year, we explore world history by analyzing the causes of events, understanding why they occurred, and comparing these events as well as the outcomes; in this end-of-year assignment we explore the relationship of our families/ancestors and neighborhood changes to the events of world history.

Purpose/Learning Goal

  1. To apply historical thinking (complexity, causality, change over time, contingency, context). 

  2. To create a project that connects world history to personal family history and changes in neighborhoods over time.

Project Tasks

This project is comprised of THREE different tasks:

Task 1:  Family/Neighborhood interview

Complete a family/Neighborhood interview and in two pages complete the following:

·         Ask your parent/guardian: When did your family move to your neighborhood? Why did they move there and not somewhere else?

·         Find a long term resident of your neighborhood, and ask them: How has the neighborhood changes? What has not changed?

·         Examine the demographic data from your neighborhood from 1940’s to present day. What do you notice? Explain?

·         Share photos from neighborhood from 1980’s and today. Compare them

·         Analyze the causes of your family’s reason to migrate to America

o   Compare that experience of your family to others that came from the same country that your family is from

Task 2: Creative task

Create a graphic novel or storyboard of your family’s story in coming to America

Task 3: Family Artifact

Choose a family artifact that is important to you and tell the story of that artifact. Why is it important to your family, important to you? What type of journey did the artifact take? This should be one to two pages typed and include a picture of the artifact

Required Resources

Interview Questions:  Provided

Research Resources:

More Resources from the NHPRCQIH LibGuide:

NYC Resources Tab – for demographic data, NYC historical newspapers 

Assessment/Rubric

·           Shoichet_grading_rubric

 

Attribution

This NHPRC Teacher Participant assignment was created by  Marc Shoichet

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States

  

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