No Gold on These Streets
a writing/reading lesson on the Immigrant Experience in Tenements
Boat of immigrants about to dock at Ellis Island in New York Harbor.
by Timothy McDonnell
Victor Jr. High School
Victor, New York
by Timothy McDonnell
Victor Jr. High School
Victor, New York
CONNECTION TO THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHY STANDARDS:
The geographically informed person knows and understands…
Std. 4 - The physical and human characteristics of places.
Std. 9 - The characteristics, distribution, and migration of
human population on Earth’s surface
Std. 13 - How the forces of cooperation and conflict among
people influence the division and control of Eart h’s surface.
Std. 17 - How to apply geography to interpret the past.
CONNECTION TO THE NEW YORK STATE STANDARDS FOR ENGLISH
- LANGUAGE ARTS:
Std. 1.1 - Listening and reading to acquire information and
understanding involves collecting data, facts, and ideas; discovering relationships,
concepts, and generalizations; and using knowledge from oral, written,
and electronic sources.
Std. 1.3 - Speaking and writing for critical analysis and evaluation
requires presenting opinions and judgments on experiences, ideas, information,
and issues clearly, logically, and persuasively with reference to specific
criteria on which the opinion or judgment is based.
OBJECTIVES (to know, to do, and to be like)
1. Students will read about the living conditions of immigrants on
the Lower East Side of New York recording information about their situations
on a chart.
2. While browsing through the website of the Tenement Museum, they
will collect visual clues of the difficult conditions faced by immigrants
during the early 20th century.
3. The students will produce a list of characters and a description
of a tenement setting to be used in writing a short story.
4. After approval by the language arts teacher, the students will
write a story about the life of a tenement family from the point of view
of one of the family members.
MATERIALS: Activity worksheet (in pdf format), access to computers with internet connection, street map of New York City, (including an aereal view of the Lower East Side), floor plan of 97 Orchard Street, writing materials.
PROCEDURES:
1. Ask students to bring information from home about their family
history. Do they know when their ancestors came to the United States?
What is the country of origin, and what was the point of entry? After
discussing their own family histories (or writing about them), the teacher
sets the scene with a description of the Lower East Side.
2. Students work in small groups for this section. Assign them a family
that lived at 97 Orchard Street in New York in the early 1900’s. (Today
that building is the Lower East Side Tenement Museum). The four families
are the Gumpertzes, the Confinos, the Rogarshevskys, and the Baldizzis.
The web address is http://www.tenement.org/
3. Students read over text about families and the Closer Look section
also. Record information on the chart.
4. Observe the family photos and other images (including a QuickTime
360° views) of the apartment. Write down observations about the
clothing and the very limited living space.
5. Student groups orally report the information about tenement life
they discovered by visiting this web site.
6. Working individually (or with a partner), they make-up a fictional
immigrant family, producing a character list and a description of their
apartment. This needs teacher approval before proceeding further.
7. As a culminating activity, they create a short story about a day
in the life of this family, as told from the point of view of one of the
children.
SUGGESTED STUDENT ASSESSMENT:
1. The students can be assessed by the data collected on the organizing
chart and by the ideas shared orally with the rest of the class.
2. Assess the short story among immigrant experiences in terms of
correct grammatical structure, the use of appropriate descriptive language,
and character development.
ADAPTATIONS AND EXTENSIONS:
1. There are many books appropriate for middle school students about
the immigrant experience during different time periods and regions around
the country. These could be used to augment this lesson.
2. Visit the website for Ellis Island (http://www.ellisisland.org/).
It has a wealth of information about the immigrant experience.
3. Another good source to help build an imagery of tenement life is
Jacob Riis’ masterpiece, How the Other Half Lives. Have
the students look through the photographs to help them better appreciate
the difficult conditions of immigrant life.
4. Use a tenement experience from another city, such as the mill towns
of New England. This correlates well with the French lesson, Petit-Canada.
