2. Investigating a historical event
As well as using oral histories to find out about life in the past, you can use written records with your pupils.
In this section, we look at how different sets of records can help pupils build up their understanding of the past. In Activity 2 and the Key Activity, pupils explore written records of past events and conduct oral interviews with community members. How you organise and gather resources together is part of your role and advice is given on how you might do this.
Case Study 2: Using written records to explore past events
Mr Thabo Sinono is a teacher of Grade 6 at the MorrisIsaacsonSchool in Soweto, South Africa. The 30th anniversary of the Soweto uprising of 1976 is coming up, and he remembers that students from Morris Isaacson played a central role in that event.
He sends his class to the library where they read up on the events. Two local newspapers, The Star and The Sowetan, have just published supplements commemorating the uprisings and he reads extracts from these to his pupils to stimulate their interest. These articles contain profiles on over twenty of the prominent student leaders of 1976, their lives and what has become of them. Many are now famous politicians, renowned business people or intellectuals. He divides his class into groups and asks each group to take one of these people and to research and then write a profile of that person on a poster, for display in the school hall. The poster must include how they were involved and what has happened to them since.
Mr Sinono’s pupils then plan to present their findings to the whole school. Their posters are displayed around the hall and some of the pupils speak at the assembly.
Resource 3: Celebrating the 1976 Soweto uprising gives some background information.
Activity 2: Researching an important date in history
This activity is built on a visit to a museum, in this case Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, but you could use a more local site. (If it is not possible for you to visit a museum, you could collect together some newspaper articles, pictures and books to help your pupils find out for themselves about an event.)
Decide on a particular historical event that you wish your pupils to investigate during the visit to the museum (or in class if you have the resources), e.g. the role children played in the uprising in Soweto on 16 June 1976. It is important that you focus the attention of your pupils on a particular event, especially if they are visiting a museum covering many years of the past.
- Divide the class into groups, giving each a different issue or aspect of the historical event to focus upon.
- Discuss what kinds of questions they might need to find the answers to as they read and look at the exhibitions (if at museum) or materials (if in school).
Back in class, ask the pupils in their groups to write up their findings on large posters. Display these in the classroom or school hall for all to see.
1.Gathering oral histories
