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Interactive
DocsTeach

Ports of Immigration: Angel Island and Ellis Island

For Teachers 6th - 8th
Young historians travel back to the past to explore immigration in the United States. Scholars match images of immigrants to Angel and Ellis Island. The activity also includes a worksheet and a short group discussion to understand...
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Lesson Plan
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Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation

Culminating Writing Project - Reporting on Angel Island

For Teachers 6th - 12th Standards
The unit study of Angel Island Immigration Station concludes with scholars using information from the previous lessons to craft a news story about the Angel Island program.
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Lesson Plan
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Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation

Making Your Mark: Free Verse Poetry

For Teachers 6th - 8th Standards
Using the insight they have gained into the experiences of detainees at the Angel Island Immigration Station, young poets create their own free verse poems that they feel captures what it may have felt like to be an immigrant interned on...
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Lesson Plan
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Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation

How Do Pictures Tell the Story of Angel Island?

For Teachers 3rd - 12th Standards
Young historians learn more about the history of Angel Island Immigration Station through their analysis of primary source images. Guided by a list of inferential questions, scholars learn how to make and record observations on a...
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Lesson Plan
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Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation

Moving to the Poems of Angel Island

For Teachers 3rd - 6th Standards
A poem carved on Angel Island's walls is the guiding text of a instructional activity that challenges scholars to put movement into a written piece of art. After warm up-activities, learners play a game of "Pass the Clap" and "Pass the...
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Lesson Plan
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Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation

Immigration Case File Investigation

For Teachers 5th - 12th
Case files for Angel Island immigrants are kept at the regional archives in San Bruno, California. Groups study one such case file to understand the life histories and different experiences of the internees and then report out their...
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Lesson Plan
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Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation

Exploring Oral Histories of Angel Island Immigrants

For Teachers 5th - 12th
Empowered by the previous lesson where they interviewed a family or community member, young historians examine Angel Island immigrants' oral histories. They use a matrix to record their interpretation of the feelings of the immigrant....
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Lesson Plan
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Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation

Exclusion "Act"ivity

For Teachers 3rd - 5th Standards
Two simulations highlight the feelings individuals experienced when immigrating to Angel Island. During the first simulation, scholars listen to and answer questions, divided based on their answers. The second simulation pins learners as...
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Lesson Plan
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Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation

Film Screening: Carved in Silence

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Director Felicia Lowe's film Carved in Silence splices together re-enactments, interviews, and actual film footage to tell Angel Island Immigration Station's story. Viewers use a film matrix to record new information they learned from...
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Lesson Plan
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Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation

Where Is Angel Island? An Introductory Geography Lesson

For Teachers 4th - 8th Standards
Prepare young historians for a study of Angel Island Immigration Station with a lesson examining primary and secondary source materials, maps, and websites. Using what they have learned, individuals create a map of Angel Island, labeling...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Immigrant Arrivals

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Students create a multimedia presentation comparing the experiences of immigrants who arrived at New York's Ellis Island with the experiences of those who arrived at California's Angel Island.
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Discovering Angel Island: The Story Behind the Poems

For Teachers 4th - 6th
Poems carved into the wooden walls of the Asian immigrant prisons on Angel Island provide upper elementary graders an opportunity to study not only the story behind the poems but to also focus on the figurative language employed by the...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Immigration for Grades 6-8

For Teachers 6th - 8th
Students explore immigration.  In this immigration lesson, students research the topic and compare immigration of the past to the present.  They create a decade long timeline of immigration.
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Teaching the Chinese Immigrant's Story - Angel Island (1910-1940)

For Teachers 3rd - 8th
Students pretend to be Chinese and European immigrants, and U.S. citizens, as they explore immigration in California in the first half of the 20th Century.
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Discovering Angel Island: The Story Behind the Poems

For Teachers 4th - 6th
Students watch a video titled Discovering Angel Island: The Story Behind the Poems about immigrants that came through Angel Island. In this Angel Island lesson plan, students respond with a journal entry.
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Worksheet
Curated OER

Rgilm 1 Word Search

For Students 9th - 11th
In this history activity, students locate and identify various vocabulary terms/phrases related to US history. There are seven words located in the puzzle.
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Angel Island

For Teachers 11th
Eleventh graders understand that the experience of Chinese immigrants is exemplified as one of many other immigrants' experience coming to the United States.
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Website
Scholastic

Scholastic: Immigration Stories of Yesterday and Today

For Students 9th - 10th
Meet a diverse group of people who have immigrated from various countries to the U.S. from the late 1800s through to today, including three kids new to the US since 2000. Includes lesson plans for different grade levels.
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Website
University of Illinois

University of Illinois: Angel Island Poetry

For Students 9th - 10th
Excellent site from the University of Illinois that provides the themes and the poetry of Asian detainees held on Angel Island. Site also includes an Asian American History Timeline, text of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, Angel Island...
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Lesson Plan
University of Illinois

University of Illinois: Chinese Experience in 19th Century: Exclusion: Chinese Perspectives

For Teachers 9th - 10th
This lesson uses primary sources to take a look at the Chinese perspective on the issue of the Exclusion Act and the effects of prejudice and discrimination on the Chinese population in the United States in the late 19th century.
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Unit Plan
Library of Congress

Loc: Chinese Immigration

For Students 9th - 10th
Excellent coverage of the Chinese immigration story. Begins with early dreams of gold, describes decades of struggle, and continues to contemporary Chinese American life.
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Website
Other

State of California: Immigration Station Angel Island

For Students 9th - 10th
Memories of Angel Island immigration station are sometimes bittersweet as the Station was designed to "Exclude new arrivals." Site provides the interesting history of this immigration station of the West.
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Website
Other

Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation

For Students 9th - 10th
The Angel Island Foundation provides a history of the Immigration Station that was in operation from 1910 to 1940. Find information on the journey across the Pacific and conditions upon arriving at the Station.
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Handout
California Digital Library

Loc: The Chinese in California 1850 1925

For Students 9th - 10th
Excellent overview of the Chinese experience in California complete with historical photos and primary documents. Site provides information on San Francisco's Chinatown, the anti-Chinese Movement, and Chinese laborers.