My, how much we have learned!

This week in 5th grade we are wrapping up our unit study on refugees. We read the historical fiction book Refugee by Alan Gratz as a class and worked in expert groups to learn more about the real-life situations of these refugees. 

At the beginning of the unit, students did not even know what a refugee was! We tried to create a circle map with everything we knew about refugees. Here is what we had at the beginning of the unit. 

       

Since it was clear that students had no understanding of refugees, we gave them time to explore the topic using an explore board. 

Then we introduced the novel Refugee and dove right into reading and researching the life of refugees. We focused on Jewish refugees in World War 2, Cuban refugees in 1994, Syrian refugees in 2015, and Ukrainian refugees to today's world. The students were given a choice of which expert group they were in. This helped motivate and engage them throughout the unit. 

We spent a total of four weeks reading and researching focusing on four essential questions:

• What is a refugee?
• What are the leading causes of someone needing to flee their homeland? 
• What is life like as a refugee? 
• What are the long term effects of a refugee's journey?

Here is their circle map used as a POST ASSESSMENT! 

 

LOOK AT HOW MUCH THEY HAVE LEARNED! 

We are also very excited to show our learning by answering the essential questions we created at the beginning of the unit!