Park City Museum, 2013 1
ORAL HISTORY LESSON PLAN
PURPOSE: In-class lesson to be used to introduce students to what oral history is and how to
do it. This lesson may be used independently in class or in conjunction with a class visit to the
Park City Museum.
OBJECTIVE: Students will understand what oral history is and why it is important to the
historical record. Students will select a person to interview, develop appropriate questions,
conduct the interview, and analyze the interview.
GRADE LEVELS: Upper Elementary—Middle School—High School
INSTRUCTIONAL PROCEDURES:
Part I: What is Oral History?
1. Ask students to write down a response to the question: What is history? This could be in
one word, quick responses, or a paragraph response to a writing prompt. Have students
share responses in a class discussion. See where students have similar ideas about what
defines history.
2. Follow up questions: How do we know what happened in the past? Who writes
history?
a. There are many ways we know about what happened in the past (journals,
objects, legal documents, photos, letters). Discuss the students’ answers and
how they relate to what we know about the past.
b. Point out that historians look at a lot of different topics when they study history.
They might study politics, wars, big national events, important things we might
see on the news. But, historians also study the everyday lives and activities of
“regular” people.
3. All of these ways we know what happened in the past are considered primary sources.
Where do you usually go if you want to learn something? (common answers: books,
internet, Wikipedia) These are all considered secondary sources. For example, the
person who wrote a book on Park City history used primary sources to get his or her
information or “sources.” What could these “sources” be? (journals, photographs,
letters, birth certificates, census, tax records, oral histories, furniture, objects (like in a
museum!), political cartoons).
Park City Museum, 2013 2
Background Information
Primary sources are first-hand accounts of an event or moment in time and are in their
original form. Secondary sources are books or articles that use a variety of primary
sources to provide commentary on an event, but these are created by people who do
not have first-hand knowledge of the event.
4. One way we know about the past is by doing oral history. What is oral history?
Background information
Oral history is the systematic collection of living people's testimony about their own
experiences. Oral history is not folklore, gossip, hearsay, or rumor. Oral historians
attempt to verify their findings, analyze them, and place them in an accurate historical
context. Oral historians are also concerned with storage of their findings for use by later
scholars.
In oral history projects, an interviewee recalls an event for an interviewer who records
the recollections and creates a historical record. Oral history, well done, gives one a
sense of accomplishment. Collecting oral history, we have a sense of catching and
holding something valuable from the receding tide of the past.
Oral history depends upon human memory and the spoken word. The means of
collection can vary from taking notes by hand to elaborate electronic aural and video
recordings.
The human life span puts boundaries on the subject matter that we collect with oral
history. We can only go back one lifetime, so our limits move forward in time with each
generation. This leads to the Oral Historian's Anxiety Syndrome, that panicky realization
that irretrievable information is slipping away from us with every moment.
Source (Oral History Background info):
http://dohistory.org/on_your_own/toolkit/oralHistory.html
Park City Museum, 2013 3
Part II: Why is oral history important? How does it add to history?
5. Discuss as a class why oral history is important. Emphasize that it is important to
understand people’s stories and their experiences related to an event.
Background Information
We all have stories to tell, stories we have lived from the inside out. We give our
experiences an order. We organize the memories of our lives into stories.
Oral history listens to these stories. Oral history is the systematic collection of living
people’s testimony about their own experiences. Historians currently recognize that
everyday memories of everyday people, not just the rich and famous, have historical
importance. If we do not collect and preserve those memories, those stories, then one
day they will disappear forever.
Source (Oral History Background info):
http://dohistory.org/on_your_own/toolkit/oralHistory.html
6. Oral history accounts add the life to the facts. And they give voice to people, regular
people, who often aren’t involved in writing history.
Example:
In 1933, unemployment had risen from 8 to 15 million and the gross national
product had decreased from $103.8 billion to $55.7 billion.
a. Same fact, but this is an oral history account that gives a personal face to that
fact:
“I remember it was awful hard times, and it was hard to get a hold of enough to
buy a sack of flour and we made our own breads, cooked our vegetables, bottled
our fruits, raised our gardens. We did most of our own cooking and pastry, pies,
whatever. Did it all ourselves; we hardly ever bought anything.” --Marvell Hunt,
recalling life at 19 years old during the Depression in Sevier County, Utah.
Source: Family Gallery Guide for “Our Lives, Our Stories: America’s Greatest
Generation,” NEH on the Road, a program of Mid-America Arts Alliance.
7. After reviewing the example, why do you think oral history is important? How does it
add to historical accounts? Do you understand the facts differently after listening to
the oral history account? Sometimes statistics and numbers as large as this are difficult
to relate to. But we might be able to relate to an account of someone’s life as told in
their own words.
Park City Museum, 2013 4
Part III: Doing Oral History
8. Explain to the class that they will be conducting some of their own oral histories to
learn about a specific time period of Park City history or another topic in American
history. Depending on the topic of study in your class, identify a time period or topic in
American history you would like your students to focus on. Topics could also be geared
to local Park City history.
Possible American History topics
WWII
The Great Depression
Life in the 1950s, 60s, or 70s
Life in Rural/Urban America
Vietnam or Korea War
Life on the Home Front
Possible social history topics
Sports
School
Life at home
Food
Transportation
Entertainment
Park City History topics
Mining
Park City in the 50s, 60s, or 70s
Development of Park City
Winter Olympics and impact on Park City
Development of modern day ski resorts (PCMR—formerly Treasure Mountains Resort,
Park City Ski Area, Deer Valley, and/or Canyons—formerly Park City West, Park West
and Wolf Mountain)
**Take Note! This year (December 2013) is the 50
th
year anniversary of the opening of
PCMR (as Treasure Mountains Resort).
9. Advise students to think of a person they wish to interview. Students may want to
brainstorm with their parents or caregiver to determine someone they would be able to
interview, such as a grandparent, neighbor, or family friend.
NOTE: Some students may not have relatives in the area or may not be close to their
neighbors, and some students may be new to the country. In this case, you may want to
identify a list of possible people in the community who might be willing to be
interviewed. Other teachers in the school may be able to help identify some sources.
10. Have the student determine what they hope to discover about the person’s life. In
preparation for the interview, the student should research the following:
a. Historical and significant events, including well known individuals who made the
news
b. Social and economic conditions
c. Culture and other interesting information about the time
Park City Museum, 2013 5
11. Students should establish 3-4 informational questions, such as full name, age, date of
birth, occupation, where they lived, etc. They should develop 4-5 questions based on
significant events of the time period and 3-4 questions regarding what their personal
and family life was like as they were growing up. Additional questions are also
welcomed and may come up during the course of the interview.
a. When asking about the Historical, Social, and Cultural events of the time,
develop questions that have the interviewee talk about their own personal
experiences in relation to those events.
b. Examples of what they may ask about, in addition to the Historical, Social, and
Cultural events going on:
i. What their parents did for a living, what growing up was like (i.e. what
toys did they play with, what did they do for fun), what were important
events and why, etc).
c. It is very important that students phrase their questions so they get a descriptive
answer versus a “yes” or “no” answer. Avoid asking questions that begin with
“Did you…” or “Were you…” Instead, ask questions such as “How did…”, “Why
did…”, or “What did…”
d. Remind students that during the course of the interview, other unplanned
questions may surface, and as long as they are appropriate, they can be asked.
12. Students should develop questions ahead of time and bring them to class for review.
The handout titled “Oral History Interview Questions Worksheet” may help guide this
process.
a. Also consider holding “mock” interviews between students to practice interview
skills and questioning before the actual interview occurs.
13. Students can also ask the interviewee if they have any letters, photographs, or objects
that relate to the time period that are important to them in relation to the interview
questions and why. It might be interesting to see these objects in relation to the stories
told during the oral history.
14. Students should set up an appointment with their interviewee. They should be prepared
to record the interview (if they have the equipment) and take notes. Students need to
obtain permission to do both—the handout titled “Interview Release Form” provides all
the vital information for doing this. Students should make two copies, one for the
interviewee and one for the interviewer.
15. Remind students that often the people they are interviewing might want to talk for a
long time. Have students stick to their questions, so their interviews don’t go too long.
Pass out the handout titled “Tips for Oral History Interviews.”
Park City Museum, 2013 6
Part IV: Analysis
16. Students should write up their interview in Q & A format, so they will have direct
quotes. If possible or applicable, students may also write an essay report which will
include direct quotes from the oral history, but will include some analysis of the
students’ findings.
a. Analysis may focus on
i. A summary of their findings,
ii. What were some of the most interesting things they learned
iii. What they found out that was surprising
iv. What the stories of the interviewee tell us about that time period
1. Perhaps what they learned from their interview conflicts with
what they know or what they have learned in school…where
would students go to find more information?
v. Further questions they would ask if they could go back to learn more and
clarify some points.
17. As a class you may want to discuss some of the technical aspects of doing an oral
history.
a. What questions were effective and led to interesting answers and stories? Which
questions weren’t as effective?
b. Was it hard to keep interview subjects on the topic? What strategies worked to
pull the person back to the focus of the interview?
a. What good follow-up questions did you ask?
b. What might have made the interview more productive?
Lesson Plan developed by the Education Department at the Park City Museum.
The following sources were drawn on to create the lesson plan:
Step By Step Guide to Oral History, by Judith Moyer http://dohistory.org/on_your_own/toolkit/oralHistory.html
The Educational Programming Guide for Our Lives, Our Stories © 2010, NEH on the Road, a program of Mid-
America Arts Alliance.
Park City Museum, 2013 7
TEACHER WEBSITE RESOURCES
For further information on doing oral history:
http://dohistory.org/on_your_own/toolkit/oralHistory.html
Examples of oral history projects online:
Rutgers Oral History Archive http://oralhistory.rutgers.edu/
Library of Congress, American Memory, Life Histories from the Federal Writers’ Project
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/wpaintro/exhome.html
Archives of American Art, Oral History Collections
http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/oralhistories/
“Been Here So Long”: Selections from the WPA American Slave Narratives
http://newdeal.feri.org/asn/asn00.htm
Example of student produced oral history projects:
What Did You Do in the War Grandma?
http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/WWII_Women/tocCS.html
Memories of WWII http://www.littleton.org/history/mem.asp
Telling Their Stories http://www.tellingstories.org/index.html
Example of local oral history projects and the variety of topics they may cover:
American West Center, University of Utah http://www.hum.utah.edu/amwest/?pageId=2089
