Curated OER
Listening to History
Students consider the insight to the past that oral histories can provide. They, in groups, analyze oral histories, prepare to interview a family member on their recollections of a historical event and then write a historical narrative.
Curated OER
Creating an Oral History--Who Tells the Story?
Explore the difficulties in compiling an oral history with this lesson. Young researchers conduct interviews and consider how point of view changes various accounts of a single incidence, resulting in conflicting information. They view a...
Curated OER
Immigration: Stories of Yesterday and Today
Students use Web technology to access immigration history and develop an understanding of the concept of immigration. Then they develop oral history writing skills, including note-taking and conducting an interview and read for detail....
Curated OER
Keeping the Past Alive
Students read about the oral histories of West Africa and complete related activities. For this oral histories lesson, students read about the importance of oral customs in African cultures. Students interview a family member about oral...
Curated OER
Immigration and Oral History
Students examine immigration. In this oral and social histories lesson plan, students analyze primary sources to research immigration history in their community. In this year-long research project, students participate in visual and...
Curated OER
Personal Stories and Primary Sources: Conversations with Elders
Students learn from their elders. In this oral and social histories lesson, students analyze primary sources to develop an understanding of the America in which their grandparents grew up. Students conduct interviews with elders in...
Curated OER
Oral History
Students create oral histories. In this oral history activity, students prepare for and conduct interviews with Holocaust survivors, liberators, or rescuers. Students study the provided procedure for the interview and present their...
Curated OER
According to Tradition
Young scholars analyze a historical document. They review oral histories as a tradition of storytelling in Native cultures and listen to an excerpt from The Life and Traditions of the Red Man. They write an episode or story that has been...
Curated OER
Could You Make an Oak Basket?
Students listen to an interview with Lucreaty Clark, a White Oak Native American basket maker. They analyze the interview and record their observations on a worksheet. Students consider information that can be gleaned from an audio...
Northern Arizona University
Northern Arizona University: Voices From the Trading Post
This resource offers a series of slideshows, oral histories, and trade goods of the Navajo people from 1860 to the present.
Smithsonian Institution
Smithsonian Archives of American Art
Primary sources related to American art and artists, such as letters, diaries, manuscripts, photographs, oral histories, and sketches, can be found in this impressive archive. An array of tools make it easy to search the collections, and...
National Endowment for the Humanities
Neh: Edsit Ement: What Is History? Timelines and Oral Histories
Lesson for teaching young historians to retell the past using timelines and oral accounts.
Library of Congress
Loc: Immigration and Migration:today/during the Great Depression
Students address these questions through activities using oral history methods and investigating life in the 1930s. They compare the immigration/migration experiences of their families to those of people living through the Great...
Library of Congress
Loc: Immigration and Oral History
The primary goal of this activity is to give students the genuine experience of oral history in order to appreciate the process of historiography. We identified immigrants in our community who reflect the ethnic diversity of our student...
Alberta Online Encyclopedia
Alberta Online Encyclopedia: Tus: Aboriginal Traditions and Knowledge
The TUS website examines the history and methodologies of land use by Aboriginal peoples. The Multimedia link is an excellent source of oral histories through interviews with elders as well as other knowledgeable people.
Smithsonian Institution
National Museum of American History: On the Water: Maritime Voices
Listen to the oral histories of four men and one woman who worked in America's shipyards and aboard her cargo ships during World War II to keep American armed forces supplied with machinery and ammunition.
Read Works
Read Works: Oral Histories
[Free Registration/Login Required] An informational text about the importance of listening to and writing about people's life stories. A question sheet is available to help students build skills in reading comprehension.
Read Works
Read Works: Oral Histories
[Free Registration/Login Required] Intended to support elementary students' reading comprehension, students will learn about jobs that require them to conduct interviews to collect oral histories. Questions that assess multiple reading...
Library of Congress
Loc: The Grapes of Wrath: Voices From the Great Depression
By examining primary sources, including songs, newspapers, interviews, and photographs of migrant farm workers in California during the Great Depression, students create a scrapbook from the point of view of a migrant worker, providing...
Alabama Learning Exchange
Alex: Memories of the Great Depression
This hands-on lesson combines social studies, language arts, and technology. Fourth grade students begin by researching and collecting information from a variety of sources. Students develop an appreciation of the difficulties endured by...
Other
The Stories of the People of Bland County
A high school project in which the students collected the oral histories of people living in Bland County, Virginia which is located in the western part of the state. The stories focus on the family histories.