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How can we make sense of contradicting accounts of the past? In this lesson, students examine a newspaper article and a poem carved into the wall of the Angel Island Immigration Station to explore what conditions were like for Chinese immigrants detained at Angel Island.
We developed this lesson with the support of the Educating for American Democracy (EAD) participants and in collaboration with Los Angeles Unified School District. We designed this lesson with 3rd- and 4th-grade classrooms in mind, but it is readily adaptable for use with older students. It focuses on the EAD theme of “We the People” for grades 3-5. It addresses the EAD history driving questions, “How have push-pull factors changed the U.S. population over time?” (HDQ3.2A) and “How have different groups shaped our society?” (HDQ3.2B) as well as the EAD history sample guiding questions, “Where, when, and why have people from different parts of the world come to the U.S.?” (HSGQ3.2B) and “How do the stories of Indigenous Americans, African Americans, Euro- Americans, Asian Americans, and Latinos and Latinas help us better understand who we are?” (HSGQ3.2F). To access the other Reading Like a Historian K-5 lessons made in this collaboration, click here.
Photograph of immigrants arriving at the Angel Island Immigration Station from the National Archives