Listening to HistoryIntroductionFamily stories help teach us who we are, connecting us to a heritage handed down across generations. But when we listen closely, family stories can also be a resource for historical research. They can take us back through memory to the scene of pivotal events or give us a feel for the impact of broad social change, providing a uniquely personal insight into our nation's past. This lesson plan is designed to help students tap this resource by conducting oral history interviews with family members. Through a series of classroom activities, the lesson introduces students to the riches historians can discover in firsthand recollections; helps them choose a topic and prepare for a productive family interview; provides tips for conducting and recording the interview; and offers suggestions for sharing their family stories in a historical narrative or report. Guiding Question:How has American history touched the members of your family? What stories can your family add to our national saga? How does their experience shed light on our past?Learning ObjectivesAfter completing the lessons in this unit, students will be able to:
Preparing to Teach this Lesson1. This lesson plan consists of four learning activities that you can use together as a unit or adapt separately to your curricular needs.2. Review the suggested activities, then download and duplicate any online materials you will need. If desired, you can bookmark specific web pages so that students can access relevant online materials directly. (See the Resource Links section below for a complete listing of online materials.) 3. EDSITEment provides access to many websites that offer guidelines and suggestions for conducting oral history interviews:
4. There are certain ethical and legal considerations associated with any oral history project. These have been spelled out by the Oral History Association in guidelines frequently updated since 1968, and they are summarized in several of the resources listed above. For educators, the key considerations are:
Suggested Activities1 Investigating
Firsthand History Part ILesson 1 Investigating Firsthand History This activity introduces students to the experience of capturing oral history through interview recordings accessible at the EDSITEment -reviewed website History Matters. Divide the class into study groups who will each analyze one of the interviews listed below. Each group will need an Internet-enabled computer and a Web browser equipped with the Real Audio plug-in. Where computer resources are limited, teachers can lead a whole-class discussion of selected interviews. Where classroom computers are not available, teachers can provide students with transcripts of the interviews. Provide all students with a copy of the Sound Recording Analysis Worksheet available at the EDSITEment-approved website, The Digital Classroom. This worksheet was developed for the analysis of broadcast recordings but can be easily modified to guide student analysis of oral history interviews.After students have completed their analysis using the worksheet, have each group make a brief class presentation on its interview, then lead a class discussion that focuses on the historical content of each interview and its value as a resource for historical research. For example, you might ask:
Conclude this activity by having students formulate one or two questions they would have asked in the interview they analyzed, basing their questions on factual knowledge of the period or subject discussed in the interview. (For example, a fact-based question to ask in the interview on women's suffrage might be, "What did you and your friends think about Elizabeth Cady Stanton?" A question such as "Did people ever boo when you were speaking?" is not based in factual knowledge of the woman suffrage movement.) Use this exercise to assess students' knowledge of early 20th century American history and as preparation for conducting their own oral history interviews. Recommended Oral History Interviews from History Matters
Lesson 2 Planning the Interview
This
activity guides students step-by-step through the process of preparing for an
oral history interview with a family member. Students identify a topic relevant
to the life experience of a family member, conduct background research to become
informed about their topic, and outline the questions they will ask in their interviews. Step
One: Choosing a Topic Some broad
topics in this time period are listed below to provide students with a starting-point
for their research project. Those unable to make a choice might go over this list
with a parent to find a topic that suits a particular family member. They might
learn, for example, that a grand-uncle was active in the Civil Rights Movement,
or that a cousin served in the Gulf War. Or the list might suggest a different
topic about which one member of the family has plenty to say. At
this stage, students should keep in mind that they are choosing a topic for conversation,
not for a research paper. The topic should be broad enough to allow for wide-ranging
discussion and a rich variety of memories, yet focused enough to give the interview
a shape and direction. Too narrow a topic can turn an interview into an interrogation
("Where were you on the weekend of the Woodstock Festival?"). A more open-ended
approach makes room for the unexpected and can lead to real discovery. Topics
in Postwar American History 1950s Step
Two: Background Research In addition to library resources,
such as encyclopedias, chronicles, timelines, and handbooks, students can research
their topics using the EDSITEment-approved websites listed below, as well as the
EDSITEment search engine,
which locates approved resources both on EDSITEment and on other MarcoPolo Partner
websites. EDSITEment Resources on Postwar
American History At the Internet
Public Library
At
Learner.Org Conversations
With History We
Shall Overcome: Historic Places of the Civil Rights Movement Step
Three: Planning Your Questions Have students
state their interview goals in writing and then develop a list of at least ten
questions that will help them gather the kind of historical information they are
looking for. Remind students of these guidelines for asking effective interview
questions: When they
have completed their question lists, have students role-play interviews with one
another to test whether their questions are effective and easy to understand.
Teachers might also review each student's questions to assess whether they reflect
factual knowledge of the topic, a clear objective for the interview, and an awareness
of effective questioning methods.
Lesson 3 Conducting the Interview
This
activity guides students through the process of conducting an oral history interview
with a family member by providing a checklist that outlines preparations, documentation
procedures, and interview techniques. Review the
checklist with students in class, discussing any points that raise questions.
Use this opportunity to arrange for students who do not have access to a tape
recorder to borrow one from a classmate. If tape recorders are unavailable to
your students, explain that they can still conduct their interviews the old-fashioned
way, by taking notes and writing up their family member's responses immediately
afterward. Students might also want to experiment with conducting interviews by
email, with instant-messaging software, or via webcam.
Provide
students with a release form to use at their interviews. See the Sample Release Form included in the American Folklife Center guidebook, Folklife and Fieldwork: A Layman's Introduction to Field Techniques. Include your name, the course name,
and your school name on the release form, along with an explanation of this research
project.
Have students check off the items on the
checklist when they conduct their family member interviews, and assess their completed
checklists to determine that all students have obtained a signed release and properly
documented their research. Oral History Interview
Checklist Lesson 4 How Stories Become History
This
activity offers suggestions for helping students analyze their interviews with
family members and present their findings in the form of an historical narrative
or report. Have students listen to their interviews
and produce a summary using their list of questions as a preliminary outline.
Encourage students to transcribe key parts of the interview as they listen, stories
and statements that are especially revealing or that bring a moment in the past
back to life. Students might also listen to their interview a second time using
the Sound
Recording Analysis Worksheet to gain a more objective viewpoint on their family
member's recollections and their own role in shaping the interview. When
students have completed this initial analysis, lead a class discussion designed
to help them focus on the relationship between personal experience and what we
tend to think of as the impersonal unfolding of historical events. Ask students,
for example, to share evidence from their interviews of the impact events can
have on individual lives. Some might describe the experience of family members
who were directly involved in events like the Civil Rights Movement or the Women's
Movement. Others might describe how events altered a family member's life, sending
an uncle on to graduate school, for example, during the draft for the Vietnam
War, or prompting a grandmother to become vigilant about recycling in response
to the Environmental Movement. Events can also have an emotional impact on individuals
that may be revealed when family members compare what they thought at the time,
about Watergate, for example, and what they think about the event today. And in
some lives, events can mark a turning-point, standing as the moment when an individual's
personal history became swept up in the historical process and he or she made
a choice, for example, to escape a volatile political situation in Latin America
or to become an enthusiastic evangelist for personal computers. Follow
up this discussion by helping students explore how individual perspectives mediate
our perceptions of the past. Ask them, for example, to compare a family member's
recollection of an event with accounts they read while conducting their background
research, and invite them to compare how individuals from different families remember
the same event, such as the first moon landing or the destruction of the Berlin
Wall. Through such comparisons, investigate how an individual's level of engagement
may color his or her recollection of specific events, how an aunt who led a psychedelic
life during the Sixties, for example, may remember those times much differently
than a grandparent who only observed the hippie movement. Investigate also how
subsequent events and nostalgia can color memories, leading a cousin, for example,
to have a more positive impression of early television shows than most viewers
had at the time. Conclude your discussion by
asking students to provide evidence from their interviews of the way oral history
can bring us closer to the past, give us a real feeling for the climate of the
times, and evidence of the way it can filter our view of the past, turning grays
into black and white, assigning minor factors a major importance, under the influence
of a lifetime's experience. Use these examples to help students recognize that
a historian must balance information gathered through any single oral history
interview with information gathered through background research, and information
provided in other interviews on the same topic, in order to construct a valid
account of the past. Have students combine
their background research and their interviews in this way to construct their
own historical narratives or reports. Those who decide to create a narrative will
aim to tell their family member's story in his or her own words, using their background
research to fill in details and provide historical context. Remind students who
choose this option to quote accurately and to indicate which parts of the narrative
are direct quotation, indirect quotation, and their own summary. Students
can also use their oral history interviews to write a report on their research
topic, developing a thesis based on their interview goals. In this case, they
might draw on portions of the interview to vividly illustrate a point in their
argument or to cast a new light on the facts of history, one that suggests a new
way of understanding what happened and why. Remind students who choose this option
also to quote accurately and to document excerpts from their interviews appropriately. In
addition to written narratives and reports, of course, students might share their
oral history findings in a class presentation; in a recorded essay modeled on
reports like those heard on the National Public Radio programs "This American
Life" and "All Things Considered;" in a multimedia computer presentation that
combines text, sound, family photos, and images, audio clips, and video clips
discovered on the Internet; or in a short story or play that dramatizes a family
member's experience in the past.
The
Digital Classroom History
Matters Internet
Public Library Learner.Org Additional Resources Oral History Workshop on the Web Folklife and Fieldwork: A Layman's Introduction to Field Techniques Usual Oral History, and the Model Forms Other InformationStandards Alignment
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