Explain A Strategy

Strategy 2: Oral Histories in the Curriculum

This strategy uses an interview to gain verbal information that can be used for a written
assignment. Essentially a verbal history is when a living person expresses thoughts or ideas
about their past experiences by talking to another person or to other people. An example would
be for K-2 students to pick topics that are personally relevant to them such as how a past lifestyle
is similar to their current lifestyle. Favorite foods, recreation, and the clothes worn could all be
topics within the broad area of lifestyle. Essentially for younger students an oral history should
be a short narrative with a topic interesting to the students. For older students such as grades 3
rd

through 5
th
the topics could be personal or about historical events that the narrator lived through.
The materials used for this strategy include data sheets, pens, pencils, poster boards, and
magazines for collage work. After the students listen to the oral history they use the materials to
create both a written and visual representation of the oral history. The older the students the more
topic focus areas with written information should be prevalent over visual information. Younger
students on the other hand can use more imagery to support their interpretation of the oral
history. Typically a parent, grandparent, uncle, or aunt would be a good person for the student to
interview for the oral history strategy. This would be a good strategy to use in a classroom
because oral history predates written history by several thousand years. Even today many tribal
societies have maintained their cultural identity through the use of oral history that spans
centuries. History as a science initially utilized three separate oral histories to confirm the exact
dates of relevant events so that they could be written down on a permanent record. This would be
an engaging strategy due to the fact that parents could be drawn into the activity and there is the
possibility of common ground between the families of the students.