Since the Y6s have just finished their PYP Exhibition and Y6 camp, this was the first class on this unit. To kickstart this unit on a metaphorical note, I chose the Island by Armin Greder. This was originally published in German in 2002, but still resonates today with its vivid personal, political and emotional themes connected to migration.
Note - this is a picture book, but it not suitable for young children.
In short, a man washes up on a beach of an island. When the natives of the island saw him, they knew he was different. What ensues is a poignant, and unfortunately, realistic immigrant narrative.
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| Image from Amazon.co.uk After reading the story, students were asked two things. 1) What feelings the native islanders felt towards the man from the beach? 2) Who the man symbolises and why? Below are the student responses. 
Students were able to connect the roles and feelings in this story to real life political situations today, by articulating a variety of responses from their own experience and existing knowledge.
In the followup lesson we looked at how the natives of the island and the man were different, but had commonalities. Students worked in pairs and wrote their answers on post-its.    Students were asked how they could change the outcome of the ending based on the commonalities of the two. With record highs (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) of global displacement of refugees and the ambivalent national reactions to them, this tale could not be more relevant and timely. Works Cited United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. "Figures at a Glance." Figures at Glance. UN Refugee Agency, n.d. Web. 16 May 2017. <http://www.unhcr.org/figures-at-a-glance.html>. |
