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Hilarie
Sutherland
09
Project
Summary
Avoca Central
School
Citizenship Through Naturalization
Process
1. General Overview of the Proposed
Project:
The students will examine the
requirements for becoming a citizen of the United States through the
naturalization process. We will start the project with the students
completing a 10 question test similar to the one immigrants are
required to pass to become a citizen. We will then discuss the
correct answers to the test and create a pie chart of their
results. Next, the class will examine the remaining test questions
(90 of 100) on the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
website. As a group, the class will choose 10 questions that they
believe are most important for citizens of the United States to
know. Each student will then be required to ask at least 3
community members the 10 questions chosen by the class and keep
track of the results. The students will also be required to inform
the community members of the correct answers to any missed
questions. The next step will be to compile all of the information
gathered by the students into pie charts for the number of community
members who passed/failed the test, as well as the number who
correctly/incorrectly answered each question. The pie charts and
questions will be placed on display in the school for students,
teachers, staff, and visitors to examine. To conclude the activity,
each student will be asked to devise at least 1 original question
that he or she feels should be added to the USCIS test and
thoughtfully explain why the information is important for a U.S.
citizen to know. These questions will also be placed on display.
2. Clear Purpose and Objective:
The purpose of this project is
to help meet the course requirements for Participation in
Government. My objective is to make students aware of the
information that the government believes individuals should know as
educated citizens of the United States. Students should also
develop an understanding of the difficulty of becoming a naturalized
citizen, compared to the relative ease of natural-born citizenship.
3. Stakeholders: grade level, who will
benefit, who will participate in this project.
The 12th grade
Participation in Government students will be the primary
stakeholders for this project. The community members who are
interviewed will also participate and likely benefit from the
project as well.
4. U.S. History Content Area
This project primarily
deals with the content area of immigration and citizenship.
5. Outline Describing Content
The New York State Core
Curriculum for Participation in Government specifically includes the
essential question, “How does someone become a citizen of the United
States?”
6. Software to be used, internet
materials, contacts, etc.
Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Word
USCIS Website (www.uscis.gov)
7. Level of Student Involvement
The students will be
responsible most of the work necessary to complete this project.
They will be active participants throughout the assignment.
8. Evaluation process (include students
when possible)
I will evaluate the students
based on completion of the tasks assigned to them (interviewing
community members, creating pie charts, writing test questions,
etc.). They will also be tested on their understanding of the
naturalization process at the end of the course unit on
citizenship.
9. Timeline: how you envision the
project being carried out between start up and conclusion
January 12, 2009: pre-test,
creation of pie chart for student results
January 13: examination of
USCIS questions 1-45
January 14: examination of
USCIS questions 46-90
January 15: selection of
questions for community questionnaire
January 16-19: community
interviews
January 20: compilation of
interview information
January 21: creation of pie
charts for community results
January 22: development of
student questions, set up pie chart display
Project Journal
January 12: The pre-test portion of the
project went well. 13 out of 17 students passed the pre-test. 7
passed with the bare minimum of correct answers. Many students
began to realize the challenges of becoming a citizen through the
naturalization process. A few admitted they were ashamed of how
poorly they performed.
January 13: We spent the class period going
through 45 of the other 90 USCIS questions. Some of the students
enjoyed testing their knowledge of U.S. history and government.
Unfortunately, others quickly become frustrated and bored with the
process. All were expected to keep a record of the questions that
they thought were particularly important.
January 14: The class examined the remaining
questions on the USCIS website. Again, some enjoyed the challenge,
while others only participated when actively called upon.
January 15: The question selection process
for the class questionnaire did not go as well as I expected. I
thought that the students would be more enthusiastic about having
input into which questions were included. Instead, I had to force
many of them into participating in the voting process. I also
realized that leaving the selection process completely up to the
students was a mistake. They tended to choose repetitive questions,
instead of the wide range of topics I was expecting. Also, in my
opinion, the test they created was overly easy.
January 16-19: The students have been turning
in the information they collected from the community. They seemed
to like this part of the project much better than the first half.
Some of them even had a few humorous stories to share about the
answers their interviewees gave. All of them completed the
assignment.
January 20: The compilation of the test
information went well. 96.3% of those interviewed passed the test.
This confirmed my suspicion that the questions selected by the
students were too easy. I think the results would have been much
lower if the students had used the questions I gave them in the
pre-test.
January 21: The class used
http://nces.ed.gov/NCEsKids/graphing/classic/pie.asp
to create a series of pie charts to express the information they
gathered from their test. The website was a great resource. The
students learned how to navigate and use the site very quickly.
They seemed to enjoy this part of the project.
January 22: The students had a tough time
developing their own questions. Some of them had thoughtful
responses such as: “What issue did Roe vs. Wade deal with?” and
“What is the selective service?”. Many turned in questions that
simply rephrased those posted on the website.
Reflection
Overall, the student response to
my project was positive. Reflecting back on the experience, I
realize that there are several aspects that I want to change to make
the assignment even more appealing for future students. The first
deals with wading through the 90 additional questions on the United
States Citizenship and Immigration Services website. In the future,
I plan on breaking the students into groups, each of which will be
responsible for sharing the correct answers for a chunk of questions
with the rest of the class. This should help to deal with some of
the boredom I encountered with that aspect of the project.
I also plan on putting
restrictions on the questions that the students may choose for the
test they create. This is to cut back on repetition of theme or
style of questions included. For example, the students chose two
questions dealing with amendments and two questions dealing with
capitals. This undermined my intention for them to create a test
that included a wide variety of questions. To ensure this does not
happen in the future, I am going to have final say over which
questions are actually included on the test. I will allow the class
to narrow their choices to between 15 and 20 questions and then I
will choose the ones that I feel are an appropriate representation
of the material tested by the USCIS.
Another piece that I plan on
changing is the interview process. I’m going to ask the students to
video tape their interviews. This will make them more accountable
for accurately reporting their results. I also think that it will
add a bit of humor to the assignment, which is something that many
students respond to in a positive manner.
The final part of the project that I need to
change is in the development of original questions by the students.
The quality of the questions developed this year was very poor. In
the future, I’m going to ask the students to write an essay
explaining what they believe every American should know and why.
This should help to generate a higher level of thinking on the
matter and lead to greater academic achievement.
There are also several aspects of
the project that I would keep. I think the pre-test was a good way
to generate student interest. The data compilation was also useful
because it visually summarized information for students who had a
hard time processing the data in pure number form. The
http://nces.ed.gov/NCEsKids/graphing/classic/pie.asp
website, itself, was a useful tool for students. Some said that
they used it for other classes after learning the process for
completing the pie charts for this project.
One of the most rewarding aspects
of this project is that this year’s students performed better on the
assessment at the end of the unit than classes in the past that had
not completed the assignment. I look forward to testing out the
changes I discussed above. My hopes are that they will lead to even
greater student interest and achievement.
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