Age range: 12 - adult
Theme: Immigration

Instructions for language assistants in Italics

Classroom materials

Introduction
This lesson is based on the topic of immigration. Needless to say, depending on where you are teaching, this could be a highly sensitive topic, which may generate strong opinions. When approaching a topic like immigration do take into account the backgrounds of your students and make sure nobody will be made to feel uncomfortable. This lesson is better suited to older teenagers and higher levels that have the linguistic resources and maturity to deal with the subject.

Task 1 is a simple anagram to introduce the topic, which should be followed by some introductory questions. You can also show some newspaper images related to immigration, preferably from the country you are in. Task 2 asks students to discuss the reasons that people emigrate and rank them in order. Task 3 is a creative writing task and Task 4 asks students to empathise with immigrants to their own country and to write a postcard home telling their friends how they are settling in. Task 5 offers some discussion statements on the topic and Task 6 requires students to imagine they are going to be evacuated to Britain.

1. Anagram.
Write the word IMMIGRATION on the board in a jumbled order such as GOMITRAIMNI and to start the class ask students to unjumble the word. When they have guessed the topic, start by asking students some general questions about immigration. If possible, personalise to the country you are working in. If you can, find some newspaper articles about immigration and some photos. For example, in Spain at the moment there is a huge influx of immigrants that arrive by boat to the Canary Islands and it’s an issue that is frequently in the news, so this would be a relevant starting point in Spain. Type the name of one of the main newspapers in your country into Google to find recent images from the papers.

Task 1 Anagram.
Your teacher is going to write an anagram on the board which makes a word in English. When you have guessed the word listen carefully to your teacher’s questions.


2. Thinking about the reasons for emigration.
Ask your students, ‘Why do people decide to emigrate to other countries?’ They will probably come up with many ideas which you could write up on the board. At this stage you may need to help students with new vocabulary. Try to think about how you will explain the new vocabulary before you go into the class. Discuss their ideas as they appear depending on how much time you have. Then ask students to try to rank the ideas in order from the most to the least important. Encourage the groups to discuss amongst themselves and do stress that it doesn’t matter if the members of the group don’t always agree with each other. Make it clear that students can also add their ideas to the list.
When they have finished, join groups together to compare their ideas.

Task 2 Thinking about the reasons for emigration.
There are many reasons why people choose to emigrate. Have a look at this list of possible reasons and discuss them with your group. Then try to put them into order from the most important to the least important. You can add more reasons of your own.

• To escape poverty
• To escape war
• To have better job opportunities
• To have a better education for your children
• To escape the political system
• To be with someone you love
• To escape natural disasters
• To experience another culture
• To learn a foreign language
• To have a higher quality of life
• To live in a country with a better climate

When you have finished, compare your list with the other groups’ lists.

3. Immigration Poem
This is a challenging task for even the highest levels as it asks students to express their thoughts on the topic of immigration by producing a poem using the stem word ‘Immigration’. Give an example of your own on the board. The poem doesn’t have to rhyme at all and let students be as creative as possible with how they decide to produce the piece of writing. When students have created their poem they could share them with the rest of the group.

Task 3 Immigration Poem

4. Send a postcard home
This is a task which requires your students to empathise with immigrants to their country. If you are able to, ask your students in advance to bring in a postcard of their town/ city in order to really write a postcard home. You could decide with your group where ‘home’ was. Alternatively you could buy some postcards to give out to your students or use the postcard template provided. This task will need a lot of preparation so that the students can attempt to put themselves into the shoes of the immigrants in their country.

Task 4 Send a postcard home
Imagine you are an immigrant and have just arrived in your country to live.
What are your first impressions of the place and the people? What difficulties do you think you will have?
Write a postcard to your friends back home telling them about your first impressions of the country.

5. Discussion Statements
Put your students into groups of three or four. Copy and cut up one copy of the discussion statements for each group. Ask students to take turns to choose a statement and read it out to the group. Set a time limit (depending on the level and interest of your students) and ask students to discuss the statements for the set time. During the discussions monitor carefully and be available to feed in new language when required. Follow up the group discussions by asking each group to summarise the main points discussed and to tell the whole class.

Task 5 Discussion Statements

6. Emigration emergency.
Set the scene for the task by telling your students to imagine that when they arrive home tonight their parents tell them the news that their family is going to emigrate to Britain. If your students know about a specific city or part of the country from previous lessons you could state exactly where they’re moving to. Ask students to fill in the table with their thoughts and plans as if they were going to move permanently to the UK.

Task 6 Emigration emergency.
Imagine that you arrive home from school and your parents tell you that your family are going to emigrate to the UK. You are going to leave your country next week. Work on your own to write some notes in the boxes. Then compare your ideas with a partner.

Internet links

An article from the Guardian about immigration in the UK.
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/homeaffairs/

An interesting site which gives statistics on UK immigration.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/

Wikipedia information about immigration.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigrant

The world in one country. An interactive map showing the proportion of immigrants in different areas of the UK.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/flash/ Britain:

Statistics about immigration in the UK. A bit old now but still quite useful.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/

Migration Watch homepage: An independent and non-political organisation. Read it objectively. http://www.migrationwatch.org/

Background reading on how new immigrants to the UK settle in.
http://www.jrf.org.uk/

By Jo Budden