Teaching Shaun Tan’s The Arrival
A Re-Imagining Migration Resource for Educators
Written by Sara K. Ahmed
This comprehensive educator’s guide transforms Shaun Tan’s powerful wordless graphic novel into a rich, interdisciplinary learning experience centered on belonging and migration. Designed to foster deep empathy and critical thinking, the guide moves students beyond political rhetoric to explore migration as a shared human experience.
What Makes This Guide Unique?
Student-Centered Learning
The guide offers flexible structures that give students agency and choice in their learning journey. Through expert jigsaw activities, Socratic seminars, and self-selected inquiry projects, students become active interpreters of the narrative rather than passive readers.
The Re-Imagining Migration Learning Arc
All activities align with a proven three-phase framework:
- Moving Stories: Building empathy through personal connection
- Understanding Migration: Examining the before, during, and after of the migration experience
- Turning to Action: Developing civic responsibility and building welcoming communities
Universal Accessibility
The Arrival’s wordless format makes it ideal for diverse learners, including multilingual students and reluctant readers. The guide leverages this accessibility with visual literacy strategies, collaborative analysis, and multiple entry points for engagement.
What’s Inside?
Ready-to-Use Activities
- Expert Jigsaw with four specialized roles exploring different phases of migration
- Socratic Seminar questions that move from textual analysis to ethical responsibility
- Harvard Project Zero Thinking Routines for deeper comprehension
- Student-choice inquiry projects connecting the text to current events, oral history, and civic action
Comprehensive Support
- Essential vocabulary for conceptual analysis
- Literary theme frameworks focused on belonging, alienation, resilience, and identity
- Paired text recommendations organized by learning phase
- Adaptable template for teaching any migration-themed text
Flexible Implementation
Whether you teach middle or high school, ELA or social studies, this guide adapts to your context. Activities can be used individually or as a complete unit spanning several weeks.
Why Teach The Arrival?
Tan’s masterwork bypasses language barriers to place all readers in the vulnerable position of the immigrant protagonist. Through stunning sepia-toned imagery blending photorealism and surrealism, students experience the confusion, fear, hope, and resilience of cultural displacement firsthand. The guide helps educators transform this visceral experience into meaningful learning about belonging, shared humanity, and building inclusive communities.
Perfect for: ELA teachers, social studies educators, ESL/multilingual programs, advisory curricula, and interdisciplinary units on identity, belonging, and global citizenship.
Written by Sara K. Ahmed for Re-Imagining Migration. This guide reflects best practices in migration education and Project Zero’s research on teaching for understanding.