Family Heritage Project and Feast

Our family heritage project was a long-term project that we worked on since September. Because the fifth graders study the history of the United States, which is a land of immigrants, they wanted to find out where their own families came from and how they ended up in the United States. This project was multifaceted and allowed the students to practice skills in many curricular areas, including writing, research, technology, and social studies.

We started by reading the story, The Matchbox Diaries. It is about a grandfather who is telling his granddaughter his immigration story using special items that he collected during his childhood and on his journey from Italy to the United States. Each fifth grader made their own shoebox diary with an important family item in it, and they also wrote the story of the object.

Each fifth grader also made a family tree that went back five generations (or as far as possible). They found out interesting facts and stories about their ancestors and enjoyed sharing them with each other. Typing up the names for the family trees and the family immigration stories were a chance to practice keyboarding skills and how to format Word documents.

Writing narratives and essays is a main focus of fifth grade language arts, so the students wrote an immigration story about a relative who immigrated to the United States, retelling their story with historical details. As always, they went through all the writing steps: planning/organizing, rough draft, self edit, peer and teacher edits, revision, and final draft.

During technology time, Jesse helped us create a multimedia presentation using Google Earth to show the route someone in our family took to come to the United States. We’ve had lots of fun exploring all of the things that Google Earth can help us do and see.

Right before Thanksgiving Break, we celebrated with a Family Heritage Feast, where the fifth graders shared all of their projects and learning with family members and each other. We enjoyed a delicious buffet of favorite family recipes that the students had found and wrote about: what the food is, where it’s from, why it’s important to their family, and if there’s a special time of year when they make or eat it.