People immigrate to other countries for many reasons. Some may immigrate for more opportunities and better education, and some may immigrate to be with family or leave a place where life has become bad and oppressive. For this activity, students will create a spider map that illustrates three reasons why people immigrate. This is a perfect introductory activity for an immigration unit, and can also be used as a review at the end!
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Due Date:
Objective: Create a spider map describing three reasons why people immigrate.
Student Instructions:
Engage students by providing real-world documents, photos, or letters from immigrants. This approach helps students connect personally to historical events and see multiple perspectives on why people move to new countries.
Select materials such as simple letters, diary entries, or photographs that are accessible for your students’ reading level. Preview each source to ensure it is clear and relevant to your lesson objectives.
Model how to look closely at a photo or read a short letter. Ask students to notice details, identify emotions, and infer reasons for immigrating. Use sentence starters to prompt their thinking, like “I notice…” or “I wonder…”
Ask students to add new reasons or examples they discover from primary sources to their spider maps. Encourage them to illustrate or summarize these new ideas in their own words.
Invite students to share what they learned from the primary sources. Highlight how real stories add depth to understanding why people immigrate.
People often immigrate for better opportunities, to join or reunite with family, or to escape difficult or oppressive conditions in their home country.
A spider map activity is an easy way to introduce immigration. Students list three reasons for immigration, add illustrations for each, and write a short summary below each heading.
A spider map is a visual organizer where students place a main idea in the center and connect related reasons or details around it. It helps students clearly organize and understand different reasons for immigration.
Learning about why people immigrate helps students develop empathy, understand diverse backgrounds, and connect to social studies topics about movement and cultural change.
Try activities like a spider map, class discussions, storytelling, or drawing illustrations of different reasons people move to new countries. These are engaging and easy for grades 4-6.