Sunday, January 29, 2012

Heritage Project: Ellis Island




The above video is a recording of a school project created by a fifth grade class in respect to immigrants coming to the United States via Ellis Island in the late 19th and early 20th century. The title of the video itself really is a clear indicator as to how immigration is presented to school children. Along with this, the children are being made to feel like how the immigrants would have felt, this is done through asking children questions with words that they are not likely to understand and it also keeps to the heirarchy by using adults/teachers to role-play the processing questions.
Through doing such a role-play with the children shows that the aim by the people teaching the class and/or leading the simulation want the children to feel like they are in the shoes of the immigrants and to empathise with them.

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