About our Ancestors

Goal: To continue to refine our research skills using secondary sources

Opportunity to work towards our goal: We are researching questions and curiosities that arise while sharing our family immigration interviews. The children each conducted an interview with a family member to gather information about immigration in their own family. Many interesting stories emerged from names being changed at Ellis Island to indentured servants to leaving because of the potato famine to being captured by pirates. The stories were fascinating, but we didn't always have the background knowledge to understand what it all meant. After interviews were shared, we identified research clues within the information and set out to find out more about history which would provide more insight into the lives of our ancestors.

Groups learned about encyclopedias and used them to look up topics of interest.
The passages were complicated and had lots of new vocabulary.
The groups would pour over the articles and work together to make sense of the new information. 

One group looked all over for any information they could find about the Irish Potato Famine.
They began to take notes to share with the class and to help them pick out the big ideas from the texts.

Another group set out to discover Ellis Island. Where was it? What exactly happened there?
As they uncover new information, they can't help but make connections to our history mystery or other things they have read or heard. "No wonder everyone goes from Ellis Island to New York! The island is only a mile away from Manhattan!"