Lesson Plans

Exploring World Cultures Through Folk Tales
Invite students in elementary grades to read and discuss folk tales from Asian countries and then research each folk tale’s country of origin and present the story and their research to the class.

Discovering Memory: Li-Young Lee’s Poem “Mnemonic” and the Brain
Ask students in grades 6–8 to dissect Chinese American Li-Young Lee’s poem to consider how memory works and is represented in our writing.

Family Memoir: Getting Acquainted with Generations before Us
This secondary lesson taps an essay by Korean writer Chang-rae Lee as the basis of an exploration of how family stories are told.

Exploring Language and Identity: Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue” and Beyond
Highs school students can explore how language shapes (and is shaped by) the ways that we think of ourselves and our families with this ReadWriteThink lesson plan. The lesson touches on issues of identity and ethnicity and their connections to the languages people speak.

Web Links

Asian American Heritage Month
This Library of Congress site features resources on Asian Pacific American history and culture, including links to biographies in the Veterans History Project, contemporary Japanese paintings, and resources for teachers.

Asian Pacific Americans Heritage Teaching Resources
The Smithsonian Education site includes materials on ethnic heritage, world music, history, and the arts. Visitors can learn about Hawaiian Lu’aus, Chinese immigrants’ participation in the American Gold Rush, and the art of Buddhism. Educational materials and lesson plans are also provided.

Asian-Pacific Heritage Month
Thinkfinity partner EDSITEment provides this collection of links that take visitors on an online tour of Asian historical and cultural information. In the sidebar, the site includes links to related EDSITEment lesson plans.

Asian Americans Then and Now
This article from the Asia Society explores the history of Asian Americans and their role in shaping the country.

Texts

Say, Allen. Grandfather’s Journey. Houghton Mifflin, 1993.
Winner of the 1994 Caldecott Medal, Grandfather’s Journey describes a grandfather’s trip from Japan to the United States and then back to Japan. The story is based on the travels of the author’s own grandfather.

Uchida, Yoshiko. Journey to Topaz: A Story of the Japanese-American Evacuation. Heydey Books, 2005.
This semi-autobiographical novel tells the story of a Japanese-American family’s internment in a desert camp in Topaz, Utah. The novel explores issues of identity and cross-cultural relationships through the eyes of the eleven-year-old protagonist, Yuki Sakane.

Yang, Gene Luen. American Born Chinese. First Second, 2006.
Winner of the 2007 Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature, this graphic novel tells the humorous story of Jin, the son of Chinese immigrants, who struggles to understand how to fit in at his American school without rejecting his Chinese heritage. The novel is featured in the first Text Messages podcast.