Pictures of Our
Great-Grandparents:
California Migrant Workers
Introduction | Task | Process | Evaluation | Conclusion | Teacher's Page
You have just discovered a trunk in the attic of your grandparents' house. There are pictures of your great-grandparents in the trunk, and some of your grandmother when she was a baby. They were taken in different towns in California, from 1930-1940. You know that your great-grandparents had left their farm in Missouri during the Depression and had gone to California to make a better life for themselves, but you really don't know much more than that about them. Let's look at these pictures and see what we can find out about your great-grandparents, your grandmother, and some of the people they knew when they lived in California.
The pictures in the trunk are in five different groups. You and a partner will do two activities with the pictures, one together, and one individually.
1. Your teacher has assigned you and your partner to one of the five groups of pictures. With your partner, choose one of the three pictures in your group and work together to complete the guide sheet, answering the four questions.
2. Then individually, write a creative essay about one of the three pictures from your group and what you think it might be about. Pretend your great-grandparents were involved with the picture in some way and you are writing about their lives. You will use the knowledge you have gained about migrant workers from the earlier activities in writing your paragraph, to make it "come alive" for your readers. Include some of the new vocabulary from the lists on the classroom wall, some of the facts from the PowerPoint presentation and the notes you took, and be sure to have the setting of your creative essay be the town where the picture was taken. Your essay should begin with the question, "Would you like to hear a story about my great-grandparents and what this picture meant to them?"
Complete the guide sheet with your partner before you begin writing your creative essay. You may also want to use some of the additional information included on the bottom of the guide sheet as you write your essay.
Group 1: Missouri and Oklahoma. There is a picture of a farm damaged by dust storms, a penniless family by the side of the road, and a picture of a car leaving Missouri.
Group 2: Arvin, California (near Bakersfield, in central California). There are pictures of small houses in a migrant camp, a man farming, and children of migrant workers.
Group 3: El Rio, California. El Rio was a migrant camp for Mexican workers near the Pacific Ocean north of Los Angeles; there are pictures of children in front of a sign, adults attending a meeting, and a family looking for work.
Group 4: Shafter, California (north of Arvin, in central California). You will see pictures of a large migrant camp, an 18 year old mother from Oklahoma, and a Halloween party.
Group 5: Nipomo, California (near the Pacific Ocean, south of San Louis Obispo). Pictures show men picking peas for 22 cents a hamper, the famous "Migrant Mother" photograph that alerted the government to the migrant workers' hunger and poverty, and drought refugees from Oklahoma working in the fields.
| Group 1: Missouri and Oklahoma |
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 Missouri family of 5 |
| Group 2: Arvin |
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| Group 3: El Rio, 1940 |
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| Group 4: Shafter, 1937 |
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| Group 5 |
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Teacher evaluation will be accomplished by using the rubric below to assess the two assignments.
Student evaluation will be accomplished by the students when they meet in groups. Those students who wrote about the same picture will meet together. Students will use the rubric to assign a score to each student's essay. The students with the highest scores in each group will read their essays aloud to the class.
| Rubric for WebQuest | ||||
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Guide Sheet |
Answered the 4 questions completely and accurately | Answered the 4 questions but information wasn't complete and/or accurate | Answered some of the questions but information wasn't complete and/or accurate | Answered none, 1 or 2 of the questions but information wasn't complete |
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Essay: Organizing Information and Writing |
Information is well organized and well written | Information is organized and well-written in some sections | Tries to organize information and write clearly | Shows little skill in organizing or writing |
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Essay: |
Shows strong understanding of information | Shows some understanding of information | Uses limited understanding of information | Shows little or no understanding of information |
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Essay: |
Demonstrates clear, creative thinking and is insightful | Uses some creativity in their approach to the essay | Shows little creative thinking | Exhibits no creative thinking |
To conclude the Migrant Worker Webquest the class will discuss and vote on which essay of the ones read aloud they think is the best. The teacher will make a bulletin board in the classroom of the chosen essay and picture.
The teacher can extend the meaning of this activity by asking students if they know of any migrant workers in our community, or people who have moved to Greenville looking for work. Do students think they have experienced discrimination? Are they able to speak English? Have they found work? What things could be done to make their adjustment easier? A Greenville News article of March 14, 2003, entitled "Hispanics Build Presence in Upstate" provides relevant information for this discussion.
This study of the migrant workers' experience during the Depression in California is designed for seventh or eighth grade students and should be covered in two class periods of about 50 minutes each. The first day should be spent in the media center or computer lab using the American Memory pictures for their group and individual activities. The second day can be spent in the classroom.
Middle school students are concrete thinkers who value social interaction with their peers. This WebQuest targets their learning preferences by using pictures and group activities to deepen their understanding of this time period.
Introduction | Task | Process | Evaluation | Conclusion | Teacher's Page
