MAIN CONCEPT:

By sharing family photographs and stories about family life students will discuss differences/similarities of different periods and different cultures.

OBJECTIVES:

• To help the students recognize important events in their family life.
• To help the students brainstorm the reasons for considering the events chosen as "important" to family life.
• To help the students decide whether all the events determined to be important would be easy to illustrate with pictures.
• To help the students decide what other means may be used to show the events which they consider to be important to family life.
• To discover the differences/similarities of family life at different periods.
• To discuss changing family lifestyles by comparing the lifestyles of previous generations.
• To discuss how family life differs in the U.S. today.
• To discuss how family life in the U.S. differs from family life in their native countries.

• Computer, modem, CD-ROM drive, a telecommunications network providing access to the World Wide Web, and a bookmark for Oral History sites
• Word Processing Software
• World Map
• CD-ROM (such Grolier's Encyclopedia)
• Journals for students to record information
• Remembering, Book 1 & Book 2 New Readers Press, N.Y. 1988.
• Portraits of Our Mothers, "The Network" p. 24
• Our Own Stories, Norine Dresser p.78 -82

1. Students will bring in photographs of family members and will make their own family albums. Students may write the names of their family members under each picture. Working in small groups students tell about each family picture using the proper vocabulary relating to family such as mother, father, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, cousin, nephew, niece, grandparents, husband, wife, mother-in-law, father-in-law, sister-in-law, brother-in-law, daughter, son, children, generation, etc.

2. Students bring a contemporary photo to class that shows something they consider to be important about family life, and pictures on the same topic from their parents' and grandparents' generations. Each picture should be dated. The pictures collected should be grouped and displayed by topic and date.

3. Through group discussion students brainstorm the reasons for considering the events chosen as "important" to family life and what other events might be considered important and why. Students discuss whether all the events determined to be important are easily illustrated with pictures, and what other means may be used to show the events which they consider to be important to family life.

4. The groups discuss the differences/similarities among the pictures revealing family life at different periods.

5. Students discuss the changing family lifestyles by comparing the lifestyles of previous generations, and compare these to how family life differs in the U.S. today. They may discuss lifestyle, work, roles of women, education, and differences in health care, such as, if they were born in a hospital or at home, and family health remedies.

6. Students discuss the family life differences/similarities between the U.S. and their native countries.

1. Using the book Remembering students read a story such as, "My Grandmother" pages 6 through 8 and compare this story with what they remember about their own grandmother.

2. Students read other oral history stories in the books in the classroom such as, Remembering, Portraits of Our Mothers and/or Our Own Stories. In cooperative groups students share and discuss how family life is presented in these stories.

3. Students visit a Web site about cultural celebrations.

4. In November while studying about Thanksgiving students need to realize that Thanksgiving was the Pilgrims' first multicultural celebration in the United States. Students visit a Web site such as the Plimoth Plantation's First Thanksgiving site.