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Zach Zimmermann

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Resource:

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  • “TELL ME YOUR STORIES: An Oral History Curriculum for high schools and middle schools, involving students with their family and community”

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What is it?

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  • The “Tell Me Your Stories” curriculum resources are intended to be used by middle school  and high school history teachers to facilitate a unit in which students complete Oral History projects. The resources include lesson plans for ten classes, supporting materials (e.g. handouts, weblinks) and samples of completed oral history projects.

 

Where did you find this resource? Who created it?

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  • The “Tell Me Your Stories” curriculum resources are published by the Living Legacies Historical Foundation non-profit. The resources are adapted from the material designed and delivered for a high school history course at The Urban School of San Francisco.

 

 

What subjects/grade levels is it appropriate for?

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  • The author of these resources designed the materials to be used in either a middle school or high school history class. In order for the unit to be most effective, however, it is necessary for students to have already developed a foundational understanding of historical thinking skills. With that in mind, the unit would be more effective if it is sequenced later in the academic year.

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How would you use it in the classroom?

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  • I would use the structure of this unit as a guideline for a unit that I would deliver in my classroom in which students participate in an oral history project about the neighborhood in which the school is located. I would likely position the unit as a culminating project for the year in which students would use the historical thinking skills that they had been developing throughout the year. Accordingly, I would inform students about the unit early in the year but would not the engage in the activities until the end of the academic year.

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Why did you choose it? What is valuable or unique about it? What makes it developmentally supportive?

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  • I chose this set of resources because implementing a unit of this type would provide students an opportunity to engage in the type of experiential learning that educational theorist John Dewey favors. Dewey proposes that students learn by doing and that a teacher’s role is to use carefully designed lessons to encourage active inquiry and interpretation of the student’s own experience. This unit accomplished that goal by providing student’s the ability to “do” a historian and to reflect on their experience and the experience of their neighbors.

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What are its weaknesses or limitations? How might you modify it to be more effective? 

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  • All resources procured from outside sources require the teacher to make some modifications, adapting the resource to match his or her teaching style, the needs of the students in their class and the objectives of the activity / lesson / unit. In order for these particular resources to be implemented effectively, a teacher would need to make these and other modifications. Although the included lesson plans suggest a structure and a sequence for the unit, they do not include a detailed plan and they do not identify ways to scaffold the content for learners.

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Supplementary Resources

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Supplementary Lesson – To Be Used To Introduce Oral History

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Other Oral History Curriculum Resources

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Samples of Oral History Project Completed by Secondary Students

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