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Letters From Rifka

Letters From Rifka. A Content Area Website Activity. By: Kinga Decsy. Book Summary.

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Letters From Rifka

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  1. Letters From Rifka A Content Area Website Activity By: Kinga Decsy

  2. Book Summary A historical novel by Karen Hesse about a 12 year old Jewish girl’s struggle to get to America from Russia. Rifka and her family must flee Russia to escape the harsh treatment of Jews and to avoid her brothers’ being killed for leaving their regiment of the Russian Army. The family travels to Poland and then onto Belgium, where Rifka is deemed an “unacceptable passenger” on the steamship bound for America, because she has contracted ringworm. She must therefore stay behind alone for several months of treatment. Rifka finally reaches Ellis Island and is detained once again, because the ringworm has left her bald. Now she is considered an “undesirable immigrant”. It was thought that with no hair, she would be unable to find a husband and would become a ward of the state. Eventually, through her cleverness, her poetry and her flair for learning languages, she is able to convince the officials at Ellis Island that she would never become the responsibility of the government. In the end, Rifka is reunited with her family and realizes that she has learned a lot about herself.

  3. Website Activity Social Studies Link Rifka is detained on Ellis Island and is not allowed into America. Take a virtual tour of Ellis Island and see what Rifka saw, heard and experienced firsthand. Start by clicking on the “gateway” icon on the left side of the screen. Read the red printed material and then “click for more information about this step.” Follow the “next map” arrows, view videos and read at each step in order to gather as much information as you can about the Ellis Island process. Compile your information, in your journals with a partner and create a 2-3 slide Power Point presentation including information from both LettersFrom Rifka and this Ellis Island website to share with the class. Supersearch Question Ellis Island opened in 1892. How many people entered the United States through Ellis Island in the next fifty years?

  4. Website Activity Science Link Rifka must stay behind in Belgium, while her family continues on to America, because she has contracted ringworm. In your Learning Journals, with a partner, create a KWL chart and fill in the “K” (What I already know about ringworm after reading Rifka) and “W” (What else I would like to learn about ringworm). Learn more about ringworm on the science link above. Next, go to the PuzzleMaker link, choose a puzzle type and create and print your puzzle. Exchange puzzles with your partner and solve. In your Learning Journals, complete your KWL chart with a reflection on “L” (What you learned about ringworm after completing this activity). Supersearch Question After exposure to ringworm, find out how many days pass before symptoms usually appear.

  5. Website Activity Language Arts Rifka and her cousin Tovah both love the work of Alexander Pushkin, a Russian poet. Read about Pushkin’s life in this summary. Do you think the events in Pushkin’s life influenced his poetry? How? And how do you think the events in Rifka’s life influenced her writing? Reflect on these questions in your Learning Journal and then create a Dialog Jacket using Rifka and Pushkin as your two characters. Supersearch Question Find a Pushkin poem, written in 1823, about “freeing a poor captive from his cage”.

  6. Website Activity Math Rifka travels a long distance from her home in Berdichev, Ukraine to New York. Along the way, she and her family stay in Warsaw, Poland waiting for the family to recover from typhus. When they finally leave Warsaw, Rifka develops ringworm and must stay behind in Antwerp, Belgium for treatment. Use this math link to find the latitude, longitude and the total distance Rifka travels between the places she experiences during her journey and her final destination of New York. Write these latitudes and longitudes in your journal. Please print a map of the world and plot the latitude and longitude of each of the four cities (Berdichev, Ukraine Warsaw, Poland Antwerp, Belgium New York, New York) that Rifka encounters. Label the map with latitude/longitude points, city names and their countries. Connect the dots to show Rifka’s journey. Now calculate the distance (using statute miles) from place to place and label the distances on your map. Add to find the total distance Rifka traveled. Supersearch Question Find the total distance that Rifka traveled in kilometers.

  7. Website Activity Art Link Rifka had many different experiences as an immigrant. Imagining this can be difficult for those of us who have never been in her situation. Browse through the primary resource immigrant photographs and captions/text at the links below, to gain a better understanding of immigrant life. *Ellis Island Photo Album *Images of Immigration*Scholastic Immigration Page *Ellis Island Photo Gallery Choose a photograph that you would like to relate to Letters From Rifka. Print a copy of the photograph directly from the site or click and drag the photo into a Word document and then print. Observe the photograph very carefully. Write an extension of some aspect of Letters From Rifka using the photograph as your guide. Your writing can either extend the ending of the story, create events which may have occurred before the beginning of the story or add-on events anywhere within the body of the story. Supersearch Question Go back to the immigrant photograph galleries, what do they all have in common?

  8. Additional Sources Hesse, Karen. (1992). Letters From Rifka. New York, NY: Puffin Books. National Immigration Forum. (1997) Facts on Immigration. [Brochure]. #234 Thematic Unit - Immigration. (1993). Westminster, CA: Teacher Created Materials, Inc. Wilson, Wendy S. & Papadonis J. (1996(. Ellis Island and Beyond. Portland, ME: J. Weston Walch Publisher. A Land of Immigrants. www.teachervision.com/lesson-plans/lesson-2654.html Distance Learning. http://teams.lacoe.edu/documentation/classrooms/language/rifka/rifka.html Ellis Island. www.Teachervision.com/lesson-plans/lesson-4775.html Geneology Resources on the Internet. http://www-personal.umich.edu/~cgaunt/gen_web.html Immigration Bibliography. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/community/bibliography/102002immigration/viewimmigbib.php Immigration. http://www.socialstudieshelp.com/USRA_Immigration.htm Immigration. http://www.tech-bytes.com/Immigration.htm #1450. Island of Hope, Island of Tears. www.teachers.net/lessons/posts/1450.html Lands of Ethnic Origin-A Statistical Potpourri. www.teachervision.com/lesson-plans/lesson-2651.html Letters From Rifka Lessons. http://teacherlink.ed.usu.edu/tlresources/units/byrnes-literature/RAdair.html Letters From Rifka WebQuest. http://coe.west.asu.edu/students/cegter/webquest6.htm The Geneology Home Page. www.genhomepage.com/ The Melting Pot. www.successlink.org/great/g147.html U.S. History Lesson Plans. http://members.aol.com/MrDonnHistory/2American.html#Immigration U.S. Immigrant Statistics. www.teachervision.com/lesson-plans/lesson-3283.html U.S. Nat’l Archives & Records Administration. http://www.archives.gov

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