Chapter 15: “My Life was Hard and I had no Money in My Pocket”: Doing Historical Research with Oral History

Oral history helps students learn literacy skills, acquire the tools of historians, and achieve many of the objectives intrinsic to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). The collection of oral history involves speaking, listening, reading, writing, and problem solving. This chapter explores this symbiotic working and also includes ideas about oral history methodology and teaching strategies. The author will provide examples of activities related to oral history with each of the strategies discussed. To insure the practicality of these activities, classroom teachers in elementary settings have field-tested each oral history activity described in this chapter.

Oral history is “telling or saying” (Boyle-Baise & Zevin, 2013). The term is used imprecisely to cover everything from family conversations to rehearsed statements by culturally sanctioned tradition bearers. Students doing oral history projects collect and record the spoken memories of living persons (Ritchie, 2003). Oral history is a diverse methodology for all grade levels and all ability levels adaptable to service-learning, inquiry learning, community studies, or problems-based learning projects. Boyle-Baise and Zevin (2013) claim that even “the youngest of students can ask relatives questions and remember their responses” (p. 33).