Family HiStories of Migration

By Diane Shea , Dawson College

At a Glance

Discipline

History
Social sciences

Instructional Level

College & CEGEP

Course

Western Civilization - General Studies
History

Tasks in Workflow

Social Plane(s)

Individual
Group

Type of Tasks

Collecting & seeking information
Revising & improving
Writing
Presenting

Technical Details

Useful Technologies

Low tech AL classroom

Class size

Small (20-49)

Time

Multiple class periods (2-3 classes)

Inclusivity & Accessibility

Variety of representations
Diversity of engagement

Instructional Purpose

Consolidation & metacognition
Application & knowledge building

Overview

In this activity, students conduct interviews with two members of their family in order to gather information about their family history and present it in class

In class, the instructor provides the students with guidelines for the assignment covering oral history methodology, interview techniques, and possible ethical concerns. After conducting the interviews, students ask the instructor follow-up questions if they require clarification. Once the interview information is gathered, students construct a narrative that they will share with their group members in class. In turn, other students hear each other’s stories and make notes about them.

Finally, the instructor can provide a blog (or other online sharing platform) where students can post their interview stories (optional).

Instructional Objectives

Students will be able to:

identify the impact and relevance of history on their own lives.
explain diversity and human migration throughout history.

Workflow & Materials

Activity Workflow

View on CourseFlow

Contributor's Notes

Benefits

Students exposed to a broad variety of histories.
The assignment is very engaging for students as it is relevant to all their lives.
Presenting the stories in class creates bonding and fosters a sense of community between students
Encourages an awareness of diversity and human migration throughout history, which is a theme of the class
As each student presents, other students have to write down what they found to be most interesting and/or something new they learned about history. This keeps students engaged as others talk which can encourage them to ask questions.
The instructor gets to read interesting and diverse work.

Challenges

Occasionally students feel or find their family history is not very interesting or do not have much contact with their family, so have to look for other people to interview.

Tips

Be careful when presenting examples as the questions students should be asking are highly dependent on the context of their interviews so they need to be encouraged to come up with their own questions.
If a student feels their family history is uninteresting or their family members don’t have much to say, then can ask questions in regard to the change of women’s role through the years, or can interview a family friend or a friend’s family instead.
Apply Universal Design for Learning (UDL) techniques – to make the activity more accommodating for various types of learning (have a look at the website)

Applied Strategies

Peer Instruction & Think-pair-share

Communication, conceptual reasoning and reflection

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Published: 13/08/2019

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