Excerpt adapted from Telling All Americans’ Stories: Introduction to European Heritage by National Park Service

In many ways, the story of America is the story of movement—the unprecedented migration of people, ideas, and beliefs. The Statue of Liberty stands as perhaps the most iconic symbol of our nation’s largely immigrant past and its European heritage in particular.

Under the watchful gaze of this imposing monument, lives converged. Between 1892 and 1954, over 12 million immigrants passed through the processing facility on Ellis Island. Many of those people left homes across Europe—particularly England, Ireland, the German and Russian empires, and Scandinavian countries—to escape famine, political and economic oppression, or in search for greater opportunities in America.

Upon crossing America’s shores, European immigrants spread across the North American continent, altering its physical and cultural landscape along the way. These experiences are often told through the treasured European American narrative of the “melting pot”—where diverse groups traveled to a “New World,” where they peopled a nation and forged a uniquely American identity. However, these immigrants arrived on a continent already populated by indigenous nations who possessed their own complex political, economic, and cultural systems. The ensuing encounters between these diverse groups serve as some of the foundational moments in American history. The 1604–1607 maps and documents by Samuel de Champlain are testimony to the interactions between French explorers and the Native peoples living along the coast.

1
Drag each tile to the correct box. Not all tiles will be used.
What is the best way to organize the sentences to express how the author develops a central idea in the passage?

A central idea in the text is that many of the people
migrating to America were European immigrants.
The author describes how people came from “England,
Ireland, the German and Russian empires, and
Scandinavian countries—to escape famine, political
and economic oppression, or in search for greater
opportunities in America.”
This detail shapes the idea because it lists European
countries that the people came from and
explains several reasons why they left for America.