Grade Level: 9-10

Subject(s): Language Arts, Speech

Learner Outcomes:

• Students will use the Internet to research their ancestry.
• Students will name and implement ways to improve listening skills.
• Students will compose a list of appropriate questions to ask their interviewees, family, and extended family members.
• Students will practice good listening skills in collecting interview answers and anecdotes about their past.
• Students will take extensive notes.
• Students will be able to limit interview information to three important points for use in future writing assignments.
• Students will use a scanner.  They will save scanned material to disk and print from disk.

Materials: Notebook paper, pen or pencil, floppy disk, baby picture

Technology Tools/Courseware: Internet ready computers, scanner, printer

Teacher Notes:

• Schedule in advance time to be spent in computer lab for Internet accessibility.  Four days should be set aside in the computer lab.  Two or three days will be needed for genealogy search, if desired, and one day for the listening skills exercise.
• Remind students to bring their floppy disks.  Schedule day to use scanner.
• Schedule projector or television/VCR for family tree sample.  Have pre-scanned the family tree diagram sample.
• A list of sample questions is included to spark discussion questions of students' heritage and childhood.
• Prepare a VCR clip from the interview sound bites from When Harry Meets Sally
• Quiz on 'how to improve listening skills' is provided.
• Collect student made scanned hard copies of baby pictures for collage or montage.
• Schedule three days for Internet and media center research in preparation of culture box.

• Students will view a sketch of a family tree.
• They will brainstorm creative question possibilities to be asked of parents and extended family in order to learn more about their heritage.
• Students will take notes and begin to formulate their own questions.
• Students will diagram their own family trees.
• Students will view a baby face interview.
• They will brainstorm creative question possibilities to be asked of parents  in order to learn more about their childhood.
• They will formulate a list of their own personally appropriate questions.
• Students have one week to conduct interviews and compile answers and other information.
• Students will bring a baby picture to class without their names on them.  Each will have the opportunity to scan the picture and save on floppy disk.  The students will then print the picture from their disks.
• These printout pictures will be shuffled, and then the students will make a collage of them.  Throughout the remainder of the unit students and teacher will attempt to guess the identity of the baby/teenager.
• Listening Skills Exercise--Students will view, on line, "Improving Your Listening Skills."  Students will then take notes on tips to help one become a better listener.  A discussion will follow.  They will participate in the listening exercise/game, "Whispering Down the Lane," as discussed in the article.
• Students will discuss listening skills and the lack of listening appropriateness after viewing a clip from When Harry Meets Sally.
• At this point, students have had one week to interview family members on the subject of their heritage and their childhood.   From this information, they now will choose three points of interest  from the material gathered.  These will be used for future writing assignments.
• Culture Box Project--Each student will select a country that is of interest to him/her.  It may be interesting to select a country of his/her heritage.
• Students will write to the embassy for information about the country and will do research on the country.This research may include books, articles, and Internet search.
• They may select a box of any size, and in that box they will create a display of things that represent their country of choice.  These items need not be authentic.  They may be items, pictures, or student made representative items or pictures.
• These culture boxes would be decorated in the country's colors and must have the country's name in or on the box.
• Approximately three days need to be scheduled in research labs.
• Students will deliver an oral report on the culture box, and they will show their country location on a world map.

Enrichment activities:

• Students may do further, more extensive search of their genealogy on the Internet.
• Baby picture collage, montage activity
• Students should collect one recipe from great-grandparents, grandparents, or parents which represents the student's ethnicity.
• The students and teacher guess which teenage classmate belongs to which baby picture.
• Community involvement:  Extended family members will be invited speakers to address the topic of "What life was like when I was a teenager," or any other pertinent topic of the past that they would like to address.
• Students may complete Once Upon a Time. . . "My Life As A Fairy Tale" as a creative writing assignment.  Sample included.

• Active participation in class and group discussions
• Students' family trees
• Interview question results
• Quiz on "tips to help you become a better listener"
• Teamwork/participation on the baby picture collage

• Language Arts:
• Listening and Speaking:    9.1-9.3-9.4-9.7-9.10-9.11-9.31-10.1-10.3
• Language:  9.65-9.68-9.75-9.83-10.8
• Computer/Technology:  9.90-9.91-9.95-9.97-10.81-10.88

• Speech:  9.2-9.5-10.3-10.6

References:

• Diagram of family tree
• List of baby face questions and other question to stimulate brainstorming and discussion of their past, including required questions on roots.
• "Improving Your Listening Skills"
• Quiz on tips to help you become a better listener

Created by:  Sandra Bennett
                    Caroline Ihlenfeld
                    Diana Ihlenfeld

                 Wheeling Park High School
                    1976 Park View Road
                    Wheeling, WV  26003

 
 
 
 
 
 

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