Tag Archives: immigration

Teaching Immigration with Graphic Novels and Found Poetry

The Arrival

I introduced an immigration unit to my 8th graders with Shaun Tan’s The Arrival.  My instructions were to “read” the book.  Now, if you’ve never read The Arrival, it is a graphic novel with absolutely no words.  It was fascinating to see my more traditional students really struggle over how to “read” this book, and amazing to see those visual learners and outside of the box thinkers plow right through it.  While reading, they had to keep track of characters, setting, problem(s), solution(s), and symbols.  This generated a great discussion about using symbols in writing.  From that, they were to create a “found poem” with words or phrases from the book.  The problem?  There are no words or phrases in the book…now that was a challenge!  Click the book (double click to read each poem) that we created above to view my 8th grader’s interpretation of Shaun Tan’s The Arrival through found poetry.  Enjoy!