When history is facts, places, and dates from far away and long ago, it's someone else's story. But when history hits home, it can be the story of adolescents discovering a connection with the past.
To Feel as Our Ancestors Did demonstrates how to connect upper elementary and middle school students to their community through an inquiry-driven project that uses oral histories as its foundation and drama as an exciting way to explore and present them. Daniel A. Kelin, II guides you act by act through every step of the process: choosing a theme, helping students collect oral histories, devising a play to portray them, and staging the play for an audience. You'll watch as adolescents, engaged and challenged by their work, make authentic, meaningful choices and take on new responsibilities as they:
- enhance their communication skills by conducting oral history interviews
- sharpen their writing skills by composing interview questions
- develop their understanding of what makes a good story by devising short plays based on their findings
- cultivate a strong sense of their community and of themselves as learners
- discover and explore stories from culturally diverse backgrounds
- work as a team to produce and present their original short plays.
You don't have to be an expert historian or a theatre impresario for Kelin's ideas to work in your classroom. He provides numerous classroom examples to show you how the project has operated successfully in other schools and classrooms, and he gives you all the forms and documents you'll need to get going:
- letters to parents
- interviewee releases
- worksheets for writing good questions
- vocabulary lists
- teacher- and self-assessment forms.
Read To Feel as Our Ancestors Did and start using oral history and drama to help your students find a history that's their story too.
