This year, I am teaching Grade 5 social studies at an international school in China. In this class, I have ten students, out of which three are fluent in English. The remaining seven are ESL learners. So, when I plan lessons for them, I need to differentiate to ensure all students have been reached.
This term we are looking at human migration and I created a lesson on push and pull factors that turned out to be quite effective. The lesson uses content and language integrated learning and has a simple role-playing activity with the objective of having students understand the various push and pull factors that make people migrate. Here it is.
1. Hook: Class Discussion
2. Clove Text on Migration
3. Class Brainstorm – Why do People Move?
Brainstorm reasons for why people might move from one place to another as a class.
4. Explanation of Push and Pull Factors
Explanation of how migration is described in terms of push factors (negative reasons for wanting to the current place) and pull factors (positive reasons for wanting to go to a new place)
5. Push / Pull Factors – Early Humans
Students look through a set of different situations of early humans and identify whether it is push or pull factor and provide a justification.
6. Push/Pull Factors – Modern Humans
A role play in which each student is given a character card. Students memorize their characters and then walk around the class, introducing themselves to each other and fill in a table based on what they find out.
Character cards:
Worksheet:
7. Debrief
A class discussion on what they found out for each character and debrief of push/pull factors
*Extension
There are many extensions that could be made for this activity but one i decided to do was the following: Students write a diary entry based on their character, describing their experience of migration.