The Grandparent/Elder Project

Unit II: Interviewing a Grandparent/Elder

Unit II of the Grandparent/Elder Research Project teaches techniques for interviewing. Students learn how to conduct an interview and extract information from oral history. They use Women and the Changing Times, one of the interviews from American Life Histories, 1936-1940, as a model for the interview with their grandparent/elder. This life history focuses on family life in the Great Depression and fits with the theme of the third unit, Gathering Information from Primary Sources.

Procedure

As noted in the Project Overview, each student is required to have a special folder in which all of the materials, assignments, notes, etc. from this project are kept for the duration of the project. The following two lessons are student directed.

Lesson One - Analyzing an Interview from the American Memory collections

The interview analyzed in the lesson is called Women and the Changing Times. This document, a transcript of an oral interview, may be printed and distributed to students for homework. It is best if students write out the answers to the questions in the lesson. The interview transcript is used both as a model of interviewing and as part of the lesson on primary sources (see Unit III). Remind students to keep the copy of the interview and their notes for the later lesson. These papers should be put in the above mentioned folders.

Students attempt to determine what questions the interviewer, Mrs. Daisy Thompson, asked Mrs. Blount and compile a list of the possible questions. Discuss how to formulate questions for an interview. Make a list of questions which the students believe should be asked of their grandparent/elder. Compare these questions with the list of Interview Questions. You may wish to add some of the student-created questions to the Category Questions of this list of interview questions, or you might suggest that the students use class-generated questions for the two original/personal questions mentioned in the "Instructions for the Interview."

Lesson Two - Conducting an Interview with a Grandparent/Elder

Remind the students to take careful and extensive notes or to tape (audio or video) the interview. It is a good idea to schedule the interview over a vacation so that students will have sufficient time to meet with the grandparent or elder and complete this assignment.

1. You may require the students to do a transcript (not a summary or interpretive narrative) of the interview. If the interview is extremely long, this requirement may be adjusted to fit a major section of the interview.
2. The typed transcript should be at least four pages.
3. If only a portion of the interview is transcribed, the student must hand in the notes or tape from the entire interview.
4. Students are directed to perform spell-check and grammar-check on the interview transcript. They are not to change the grammar, idioms, etc., of the person interviewed but to use [sic] to indicate these non-standard items.

Evaluation and Extension

1. The collected interview transcripts should be read, but not marked or graded, by the teacher. If the transcripts do not meet the requirements, they should be returned to the student for revision.

2. Both the teacher and the librarian should read the interviews and make comments on a back page or a separate sheet. The comments should focus on what was interesting or unique about the person, the good qualities of the interview process, and ask questions of the student to further his or her learning from the grandparent/elder interviewed.

3. A roundtable sharing of what each student found interesting during the interview concludes this unit. As the students share one to three interesting things, the teacher and the librarian should make notes. These "interesting things" often lead to the topics that the students pick for their history research paper, Unit IV. The librarian and teacher can use this list to help students select their topic or as a means to question the student as s/he is hunting for the research topic.

4. You may wish to create a file or a Web site of interview transcripts. The transcripts and the resulting history research papers and visuals created for the history research paper oral presentation may form part of a presentation or display for "Grandparents' Day," if such an event is celebrated at your school.