Refugee Novel Study | Children & Displacement: Growing Up as a Refugee

Refugee Novel Study | Children & Displacement: Growing Up as a Refugee

Help students better understand Refugee by Alan Gratz by exploring how displacement specifically affects children and how young people demonstrate resilience, adaptation, and hope during incredibly difficult circumstances.
This no-prep Refugee novel study background knowledge activity helps students investigate the real-world experiences behind the journeys of Josef, Isabel, and Mahmoud. Students explore how displacement can affect education, family relationships, safety, basic needs, language, culture, identity, and belonging while also examining documented examples of resilience and adaptation.
Rather than focusing only on hardship, students are encouraged to see displaced children as whole young people with strengths, relationships, hopes, and potential.

Students Will:
- Explore how displacement can affect different parts of a child’s life
- Analyze connections between education, family, safety, identity, and belonging
- Examine challenges faced by displaced children
- Investigate examples of resilience and adaptation
- Consider the people and organizations that can provide support
- Analyze cause-and-effect relationships
- Evaluate trustworthy research sources
- Connect real-world research to Josef, Isabel, or Mahmoud
- Collaborate to create a Refugee Context Gallery Exhibit

What’s Included:
- Teacher Directions & lesson overview
- Mini research questions & reliable resources
- Group Gallery Walk activity
- 3 student research, analysis & planning pages
- Novel connection activities
- Color and black-and-white student pages

Group Activity: Refugee Context Gallery Exhibit
Students work collaboratively to research how displacement affects children specifically. Groups can focus more closely on the challenges displaced children face or on documented examples of resilience and adaptation. Their Gallery Walk display presents both the genuine challenges and genuine resilience experienced by displaced children.
Students also connect one specific fact from their research to an experience of Josef, Isabel, or Mahmoud, strengthening the connection between real-world background knowledge and the novel.

Perfect For:
- Refugee by Alan Gratz novel studies
- Pre-reading & background knowledge
- Grades 6–8
- Middle school ELA
- Social Studies & Humanities
- Historical fiction units
- Refugee & migration studies
- Global studies
- Research & inquiry
- Cross-curricular ELA & Social Studies
- Sub plans

Why Teachers Love It:
- No prep and ready to use
- Builds meaningful context for Refugee
- Keeps complex global issues accessible for middle school students
- Goes beyond simply collecting research facts
- Helps students understand how different parts of a child’s life are interconnected
- Balances real challenges with resilience, adaptation, and hope
- Encourages thoughtful, respectful discussion of displaced children
- Makes meaningful connections to Josef, Isabel, and Mahmoud
- Develops research, analysis, collaboration, and presentation skills

Students finish the lesson with a deeper understanding of Josef, Isabel, and Mahmoud as more than characters facing danger—they are young people navigating disruption, maintaining connections, adapting to change, and demonstrating resilience.