MAIN CONCEPT:

The students compare local history to oral history.

OBJECTIVES:

• To help the students form a personal timeline.
• To help the students discover more about their family heritage.
• To help the students see themselves and their heritage as an integral part of the ongoing events in history.
• To help the students realize the importance of their own family history, and how it relates to the local history.
• To have the students explore immigration.
• To help the students enhance their research and communicative skills.
• To help the students use their reading and writing skills and begin making comparisons regarding how the local area has changed since their arrival.

• Computer, modem, CD-ROM drive, a telecommunications network providing access to the World Wide Web, and a Web browser bookmark for Oral History sites
• Word Processing Software
• World Map
• CD-ROM (such as Grolier's Encyclopedia)
• Journals for students to record information
• Portraits of Our Mothers (p.52)
• Multicultural Activities for the American History Classroom, by Hallie Ann Wannamaker (p. 221- The 1990's)
• If Your Name was Changed at Ellis Island, by Ellen Levine
• Ellis Island, by R. Conrad Stein

1. The students draw a timeline and record their birthdates, the birthdates of their mother, grandmother, and, if possible, their great-grandmother. The students could also include the dates of important events that happened in their lives, such as: when they arrived in the U.S., left school, married, the birthdates of their children, etc.

2. The class takes a field trip to the public library and asks the reference librarian or media specialist to help the students find local newspapers for each of the dates. Each student lists the local historic events on their timeline covering the same time period as their dates.

3. Using the computer students access the Internet viewing the web site of their local newspaper or the museum of the local historical society which lists local historic events, and they write these dates on their timeline.

4. Using a timeline of local historical events, students begin to make comparisons of how the local area has changed since their arrival.

1. As a class activity students write the names and birthdates of themselves, their mothers, grandmothers, and, if possible, their great-grandmothers, each on a separate index card. Combine all the cards from the class and put them in order from the earliest to the most recent. Make an enormous timeline around the classroom. The students research the local history and list the historic events which occurred on these dates.

2. The class takes a field trip to the public library and asks the reference librarian or media specialist to help the students find newspapers for each of the dates. Each student lists the worldwide historic events on their timeline covering the same time period as their dates.

3. Using the computer students access the Internet viewing the web site that lists worldwide historic events in a timeline.

4. Given a Venn Diagram, students will brainstorm their personal and/or friends' experiences about fitting into a situation, then retell their experiences at the writing center.

5. To recall and retell individual experiences of "fitting in". The students tell about their personal experiences of adjusting to a new culture (school, work, country, neighborhood, club, sport).

6. Students learn about the history of immigration by reading and listening while the teacher reads excerpts from the books, Ellis Island and If Your Name was Changed at Ellis Island.

7. Given the use of the World Wide Web immigration site (FAIR) students will read about the experiences of others in adjusting to a new culture and explore immigration on the Internet and write these dates on their timelines.

8. The class may take a field trip to a local museum. Comparisons may be made of the present and the past. Students may also discuss and compare the American culture to that of other countries.