Teach students about World Immigration Day with these 15 creative lesson plans

On December 18, 1990, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a resolution on the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families. Ever since, the 18th of December has been celebrated as World Immigration Day, a day to reflect on the immigrant condition and contributions worldwide.

In this blog post, we bring you 15 engaging, ready-to-use World Immigration Day activities for your classroom.

We’ve divided this post into different sections.

• Immigration Day Activities for Elementary School
• Immigration Day Activities for Middle School
• Immigration Day Activities for High school

All digital activities below were created with BookWidgets and can be used for free. When you open the link, click on the Make a copy button on the top left of the page or access our group folder, where you can see all immigration activities. By duplicating the widgets, you can edit them to best suit your needs or translate them to other languages before sharing them with your students.

Immigration lesson plans for Elementary School

The activities below explore the topic of immigration for primary school students from various angles. They aim to raise awareness about the immigrant experience, encourage students to view immigrants from a different perspective, discuss how immigration has influenced our eating habits, and investigate their own family’s heritage.

1. Immigration From Children’s Perspective

Children see the world in a much simpler manner than adults, and this worksheet about immigration is proof of that. It includes a crossword puzzle with some concepts about immigration and a video in which children explain what immigration is. Your students can then write about immigrants they know and their stories.

2. Immigrant Food

This tip tile activity on immigration will open your students’ appetite. It can be used as a warmer for a lesson about the cultural impact of immigrants, in this case, more specifically related to food. After brainstorming as a class what the students’ favorite foods are and writing the answers: Ask them if they know where these foods come from and why they eat them. Share the tip tile activity to play a guessing game: students have to name the food and guess where it’s from. Allow them time to look up online and provide tips to make their search easier.

💡 Pro tip! Adapt this activity as needed according to the country or region where you live since the influence of different immigrant groups varies widely.

3. Immigrant Superheroes

This reading activity for primary school on immigration day introduces a text about three superheroes who are also immigrants: Superman, Wonder Woman, and Wolverine. Students do a text comprehension activity and then reflect on the contributions these superheroes have made to society—regardless of where they come from.

4. My Ancestors’ Journeys

This project for primary school students brings the topic of immigration closer to home. Students have to interview their family members and ask them about their families’ roots. Depending on your class’s profile, instead of using a world map as a background image, use your country’s map to highlight internal migration instead of international.

💡 Pro tip! This immigration activity for elementary students can be combined with a family tree project, focusing on the origins of the ancestors and their journey to where they are now.

5. Storytelling

Another great way to teach about immigration to elementary students is through storytelling. If you can invite an immigrant, preferably a child or a teenager, to share their experience with immigration, that can be a very enriching moment. Students can listen to the stories and ask the person questions about their journey.

Alternatively, you can read a children’s book about immigration, such as “My Diary from Here to There” by Amada Irma Perez, and ask students questions about the book that will make them reflect on the narrator’s immigration experience. This whiteboard activity on immigration for elementary students gives students the possibility to interpret a scene of the story their way by drawing it.

💡 Pro tip! Students could be shy when talking to a stranger in person, so it can be a good idea to prepare some questions to interview your guest.

Immigration lesson plans for Middle School

This collection of interactive activities—including pair-matching games, video quizzes, song analysis, and storytelling—offers dynamic ways to explore migration’s causes, challenges, and contributions. Designed for middle school students, these resources encourage collaboration, reflection, and a deeper understanding of immigration’s impact on society, making the topic both engaging and educational.

6. Pair-Matching: Famous Immigrants and Their Contributions

Start the class by brainstorming in plenum what famous immigrants they know. Then, the class will be asked how these people contribute to society or culture. Once this warm-up activity is done, give the students this pair-matching game on immigration for middle school, in which they have to match an immigrant with the contributions they’ve made to society. Then, divide the class into groups and assign one immigrant of the pair-matching game to each group. They should do some research about the life of that person and present it to the class.

💡 Pro tip! This pair-matching activity about immigrants can be used alone or as part of an immigration project.

7. Why Do People Migrate?

Use this video quiz activity about immigration for geography class in the flipped classroom to have students prepare for a debate about migration. Students watch the video at home, do the video quiz, and discuss questions about the topic in groups back in class.

💡 Pro tip! To spark the group discussion, give students more questions with this randomness wheel.

8. What’s In A Name?

This engaging activity on immigration for middle school is based on two short videos reflecting the importance of a name. Students will debate the importance of a name for integration and cultural resistance; they will get to create their Chinese name and write an essay with their thoughts on the topic.

💡 Pro tip! Adapt this activity as needed. If your class has several students of Chinese descent, change the kind of name they have to create since they will already have a Chinese name.

9. Student’s Immigrant Stories

This video-quiz activity features real-life stories of American students with a migration background. Start the activity by having students brainstorm possible reasons for migration (you can use this other activity as a warmer). Students watch the video, take the quiz, and, in the end, have the opportunity to tell their own immigration stories.

10. Migration Short Film

This adorable but deep short film about immigration will make your middle school students empathize and reflect on why polar bears migrate and the challenges they face in their new homes. This short film can be used as the base for a writing exercise and a group discussion about other possible endings for the short film. Due to the different layers of this short film, it can be easily adapted to other levels if you want to use it to promote deeper reflections and debates.

💡 Pro tip! Keep in mind that this can be a very sensitive topic for students with migration backgrounds, so make sure that this animation film about immigration is suitable for your students so as not to trigger any negative reactions from them.

11. Englishman In New York

Okay, so this is not the most contemporary song, but it’s a classic and fits the topic of immigration very well. This split worksheet brings Sting’s Englishman in New York video clip on one side and exercises group discussion on the subject of migration and lyrics analysis.

💡 Pro tip! This idea can be used with other songs that also bring immigration as a main topic. For Spanish class, for instance, you can use the song Clandestino, by Manu Chao, another classic

Immigration lesson plans for High School

Understanding immigration requires a blend of historical knowledge and critical analysis of present-day trends. These immigration lesson plans for high school students are designed to deepen their grasp of migration patterns and their impact. Each task challenges students to think critically, collaborate, and draw connections between historical and contemporary issues, from quizzes and interactive maps to graph-based essays and discussions on migration waves. These lessons encourage a nuanced exploration of migration, equipping students with the tools to engage thoughtfully with this complex and timely topic.

12. American Immigration Quiz

This immigration quiz for high school students can be used to test your students’ knowledge after you have taught them about the history of immigration in the United States. You can adapt it by adding regional information or increasing the difficulty level.

💡 Pro tip! Here you can find updated information about immigration worldwide.

13. Migration Waves

This history split whiteboard activity shows a summary of migration waves from the 18th century on one side and a world map on the other. Students need to draw lines of different colors representing each of the waves described and label them.

💡 Pro tip! Adapt this activity to focus on immigration waves specific to your country.

14. Interactive Migration Quiz

This interactive migration quiz allows your students to explore the migration situation in different European countries. After taking the quiz and summarizing in writing what they learned, they discuss in groups the possible reasons for the data they’ve learned when taking the quiz.

15. Graph-Based Essay

Using graphs to give students input to write an essay can be engaging and efficient. This lesson plan on immigration for high school students combines just that, but with a twist: instead of just interpreting the graph, students discuss in groups the top 5 destinations for immigrants and their top 5 origin countries. After doing the first exercise, they go to the next page, where they will find the complete graph and use it to write an essay.

💡 Pro tip! You can find other interesting graphs on migration here.

Wrap-up

World Immigration Day offers teachers an excellent opportunity to create engaging and educational classroom experiences centered around migration and its impact on society. The 15+ interactive lesson plans and digital activities outlined in this blog are perfect for raising awareness about immigration, exploring historical migration patterns, and fostering critical thinking.

Remember, all the featured lesson plans are designed with BookWidgets. You can duplicate the lesson plans from this group, adapt them, and share them with your students. You can also create lessons on this topic or any other topic from scratch. Want to learn more about creating engaging lesson activities with BookWidgets?

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