Learning about the world of Seedfolks (and your world)

Introduction

The novel Seedfolks looks at how a shared garden can create a feeling of community among people who had been strangers.  In this webquest you will learn about some of the life experiences the characters of Seedfolks were affected by.  You will also find out how the  author of the novel, Paul Fleishman uses the language of the characters to bring you into their worlds.   

Task

In groups of two you will investigate the countries across the world the families of the characters in Seedfolks from.  Then you will prepare a presentation which you and your partner will use to educate and make your classmates aware of the important facts about the country.

Both of you will take notes and using a flashdrive will preserve interesting pictures and graphs on the study.  Then one partner will be in charge of writing down a presentation while the other partner will be responsible for presenting the information to the class.

The presentation will be three to five minutes in length.

Process

At this point you and your partner will choose a character and research the country their family emigrated from.  The available characters are:

Kim: country of origin Vietnam  check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam

Ana: country of origin Romania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romania

Gonzalo: country of origin Guatemala https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemala

Maricella: country of origin Mexico  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico

Amir: country of origin India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India

Nora: country of origin England https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/England

Sae Young: country of origin Korea  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korea

Once you and your partner decide on a character you may start researching by clicking on the link which is for an online encyclopedia.  You may also do research on your own by searching with google.

Evaluation

We will be using a rubric to evaluate the presentations.

How to have a fine presentation

4pts: presentation has

at least three areas presented 

4pts: the presenter show much interest in topic 4pts: presenter makes continuous eye contact and speaks clearly  

3pts: presentation has at least

two areas presented

3pts: the presenter show interest in topic 3pts; presenter makes some eye contact and is generally clear  

2pts: presentation has at least

one area presented

2pts.: presenter is trying 2pts: presenter makes a little eye contact and is often clear in speaking  

1pt: presentation has some

disorganized information

1pt: presenter does not show much interest in topic 1pt: presenter is looking away from audience and is difficult to understand  

 

Conclusion

Hopefully, you have learned from your research and that of your classmates about some of the paths people have taken to arrive in America.  Also,  you now know how to access information on wikipedia.

At this point would you take a moment and evaluate (rate) this lesson for how well it did build your knowledge about some sources of immigration to the USA.  Please use a one to four scale with four being the highest rating.  Finally, would you predict that knowing information about where people come from makes you more or less likely to be curious about the backgrounds of people you meet in life.  Please explain your answer.