Creative Ways
to Connect Students to the Past
By Jill
Jenkins
Growing up
in the ‘50’s and ‘60’s, I had a strong sense of history. My father had served in the Sea Bees during
World War II and my mother came from a pioneer family who had settled the
western city in which I lived and the family had grown generation after generation. My father’s passion for history meant our
house was filled with books about the war, the ancient Mayan and Aztec
Civilization, European History and archeology books. When I began to teach, I was shocked to discover
that most students had little or no sense of history or even life before their
12 to 14 year existence. Over time working with the history department at my
school, we created some projects to help students have a wider historic view of
the world. Without a sense of history, students will find it difficult to
understand most pieces of literature and the world that they live in.
To Whom Are
You Related?
To help
students understand that history was not just something you read about in your
textbooks, students research one of their ancestors and learn at least three
events from that person’s life. They are
asked to interview parents or grandparents to learn their ancestor’s life story.
The students should be describing three events or stories from the ancestor’s
life, not just facts about the person. If the student has no family to interview, I
suggested they adopt a family by interviewing a neighbor or an elderly person
in a retirement home. They dress as
their ancestor to present a mono-act of their ancestor’s story as though they
were that person. Each student has to
provide each class member with a handout.
That handout could be a fact sheet, or something more creative. One of my former students was related to Milton
Hershey, so she passed out Hershey’s kisses glued to a piece of paper with
details about Milton Hershey’s life. Another one of my students was from Viet
Nam and his grandfather had been an officer in the North Vietnamese army. The story of his grandfather’s life helped
students understand the human connections that unite all people making this a
great learning experience for everyone.
My
daughter’s teacher assigned a variation of this assignment. He wanted his students to appreciate a
veteran for Veteran’s Day, so he asked student to find a family member or a
neighbor who was a veteran and had served during a war and interview him. My daughter interviewed my father who served in
World War II. Each student presented
his/her findings with a picture of the veteran giving the students a face and a
story.
Anne Frank and
the Other Victims of the Holocaust
To teach The
Diary of Anne Frank, I use a variety of activities to
help the students relate to events that seem very foreign to them. First, many teachers choose to teach the play
instead of the actual diary, but I feel that students need to read a primary
historical source, even if it is more difficult to read. Second, students need to know that Anne
Frank’s situation was not unique. Many
people were in hiding during World War II.
One wonderful resource is the United States Holocaust Museum at http://www.ushmm.org/remember. I have
my students each select three victims who were about their age. Each student creates a poster with the names,
picture (if available) and story of three victims of the Holocaust. My former in-laws were both in hiding in
Holland during World War II. Although I
was never able to convince them to talk to my classes, I was able to tell their
story and show them pictures of them. My
hope is to make history the story of real people to my students, not just a lot
of facts, dates and foreign places as it was presented to me in middle school.
Another
great project is to use the sources on The United State Holocaust Museum
webpage http://www.ushmm.org/confront-genocide
and ask students to research another example of genocide. They need to create a Power Point
Presentation about their example of genocide and create a plan for stopping
destructive behavior. Each student
presents his/her Power Point to the class, so the students continue to learn
from one another.
Connecting the
Past with Parents
Another way to help the students
connect with the past and their parents is to give students a list of books on
the time period that you are teaching.
Students are given two copies of the book and ask to take one home. The student reads the book and the parent
(grandparent or neighbor) reads the same book.
As they read the book, they discuss it together. After they finish reading the book, the
parent comes to school with his/her son/daughter to discuss the book. The teacher, of course, has to supply the
discussion questions during the reading and after the reading. Since the other students watch the
discussions given by the other parents and students, they are exposed to other
books. Hopefully, this will motivate
them to read other books and expand their exposure.
A few books
that could be used in conjunction with The
Diary of Anne Frank include:
Using Songs
As
a teacher, you could introduce one or two songs to you class and then assign
each student to find a song that bests reflects the time period. He or she should present his/her song to the
class and justify why he/she selected it.
Another idea is to have your students work in pairs and write their own
song for that time period.
To take it a step further, you could
have student write their own song about their lives. One by Monte Selby has some
excellent examples of songs about the lives of students.
·
“Dixie”
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I find the songs of Woody Guthrie invaluable.
One excellent choice appears on Nanci Griffith’s CD, Other
Voices Too, "Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)"
which was based on a newspaper article that Woody Guthrie found describing the plight of a group migrant workers who were
killed in an airplane accident when they were being deported. The story is relevant today. Another one of Wood Guthrie songs appears on
Nanci Griffith’s CD, Other
Voices, Other Rooms. Woody Guthrie’s song, "Do-Re-Mi" tells the story of the victims the dust bowl arrival
in California. If you were teaching
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, it would be invaluable. Others include:
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Conclusion
Since these
activities are student-centered project students will be more motivated to do
them and more likely to learn from them.
Students who have a sense of history will increase their comprehension
of literature and nonfiction reading.
Activating prior knowledge has proven invaluable to increasing reading
comprehension; however, when students have limited background knowledge,
students have low comprehension levels.
By increasing students connection to history and their basis knowledge
on historic events, their reading comprehension grows.
Note: all of the colored text is linked to the song, books or web-pages that can give you information.
Note: all of the colored text is linked to the song, books or web-pages that can give you information.
