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Stories All Around Us

Stories All Around Us packages elements of different Thinkfinity resources into a single, multifaceted afterschool or classroom project.

 

Objectives

  • Help students understand that their lifetime represents a small piece of history and make connections between their family history and world events.
  • Formulate questions and conduct an oral history interview, taking notes about a family member's or community member's childhood experiences.
  • Use a graphic organizer to synthesize key elements of a story and share it with an audience using various storytelling techniques.

 

Overview

History is not confined to textbooks; it lives in our own experiences as well as our neighbor's experiences and is passed along through stories. Take your group through activities that help them see their lives in an historical context, and then use storytelling techniques to tell an elder's oral history.

 

Step 1: Getting Started

Lead the group in a discussion of “the past” to get at the concept of history, using events from their own lives as points on a class timeline.

View resource: What is History? Timelines and Oral Histories by EDSITEment

Focus on: Activities 1 & 2

 

Step 2: Find Out More

Read an oral history to the group, like the story of Sundiata: Lion King of Mali, from 13th-century Africa. After a group discussion outlined in the resource, prepare the group to interview family or community members about their childhood.

View resource: When I Was Young by ARTSEDGE

Focus on: Activities 2 & 3

 

Step 3: Piece It Together

After conducting interviews, members of the group select a story that they wish to work with. It should include a setting, problem and outcome. Using an online story mapping tool, they develop a story to share with the group.

View resource: Story Mapping by ReadWriteThink

 

Step 4: Share What’s Learned

It’s time to share the stories. Prepare the group with tips on good storytelling, like modeling strong (and weak) storytelling techniques. After rehearsing with a partner, each member of the group shares his or her story.

View resource: When I Was Young by ARTSEDGE

Focus on: Activities 5 & 6

 
 

Age: Elementary

Themes: Storytelling, oral history and community

Duration: 3-4 weeks

 
  • Materials Needed
  • Computer with Internet access
  • Large roll of butcher paper
  • Notebooks and pens
 
  • Standards

National Council for the Social Studies
• Standard 1: Culture and cultural diversity
• Standard 2: Time, continuity and change
• Standard 4: Individual development and identity
• Standard 9: Global connections and interdependence


National Standards for Arts Education
• Theater Standard 1: Script writing by planning and recording improvisations based on personal experience and heritage, imagination, literature, and history
• Theater Standard 2: Acting by assuming roles and interacting in improvisations
• Theater Standard 5: Researching by finding information to support classroom dramatizations


National History Standards
• Standard 1: Understands family life now and in the past, and family life in various places long ago