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Activity #1: Learning to Listen
Grouping: Pairs
Description: One of the most important skills in interviewing and one of the most difficult for inexperienced interviewers is how to listen carefully and how to make the interview feel like a conversation even though one person is doing most of the talking. The activity below helps develop those skills.
Procedure:
1. Divide class into pairs
2. Designate one member of the pair as A and the other as B.
3. Tell students that they are going to listen to each other talk for two minutes about a particular experience they or a member of their family had. Select a topic that relates to the unit theme.
4. Ask students to close their eyes and use guided imagery to help them recall rich sensory details (if they are recalling a personal experience) or to imagine those details if they are retelling a family story: sights, sounds, smells, emotions. Then give them a few minutes to think about how to shape their memory into a story with a beginning, middle, and end.
5. Tell students that while A is talking, B is to listen only and not take notes nor ask questions. When two minutes is up, ask the pairs to reverse roles; B will talk for two minutes and A will listen.
6. Ask pairs to stand or come to the front of the class, one pair at a time. Ask A to say his/her name and introduce his/her partner, then to retell to the class what B said. Then A should ask B if there is anything that was left out that B would like to add. Reverse roles and have B do the same for A.
7. Discuss the experience with students. What did it feel like to listen and not ask questions? What is difficult or uncomfortable? Was it easier to listen or to talk? Did anything surprise you? What did you learn (about interviewing, about yourself, about your partner)? What would you do differently if you did this again?
Activity #2: Model Interview
Grouping: Whole Group
After debriefing the listening exercise, select one participant to interview in depth. Before conducting the interview, we discuss important steps in preparation, including identifying a person to interview who has first hand experience of the events or period of history you are researching, calling ahead to explain your project and assure the person that you are interested in their personal experiences, preparing a list of topics and questions (thinking ahead to your culminating project or use for the interview helps in the formulation of questions), and checking your equipment if you plan to record the interview. Since we will be writing a song based on our interview, discuss questions that might yield the kind of material we would need for songwriting, e.g., interesting phrases and images, styles of music that the interviewee likes or associates with the cultural or historical event, sensory details, and a narrative sequence to tell a story.
Discuss the two types of questions you might employ.
These are:
Closed-ended questions that get “yes” and “no” or one or two-word responses and help you gather basic information. These questions often begin with the words: • What (is the name of the town where you were born?) • Where (were you stationed during the war?) • When (did you family come to the United States ?) • Did (your family enter the United States through Ellis Island ?)
Open-ended questions give the narrator a chance to talk at length on a topic and often begin with the words and phrases: • Tell me about (your experiences working in the mine) • What was it like (living on the Lower East Side at that time)? • Describe (a typical day at sea). • Explain (how you prepared for your journey). • How (did you feel leaving your family behind)? • Why (did you decide to take a job in a factory)? Encourage students to listen carefully to interviewee’s responses and ask follow-up questions to clarify or probe more deeply into a topic or to get more specific and detailed information.
Activity #3: The Songwriting Process
Grouping: Whole Group and Individual
After conducting the interview, introduce the songwriting process. Although City Lore’s teaching artist, Leo Schaff, has students write both the lyrics and the music, students can write lyrics using an existing melody. Select Key Words, Phrases, Images - From what you heard in the interview list some words and/or phrases you remember; include images or feelings of your own that may have come to mind while listening.
Organize and Categorize - Organize words/phrases into groups based on a particular aspect of the interview: an event, a description, a story, a feeling, a memory, etc.
Analyze and Interpret - Is a theme emerging — struggle, journey, longing, the old and the new, hardship, hope, loss, the importance of family ties, etc.? Is there a story we want to tell? We can start a list of possible themes.
Add Rhyme - Transform phrases into lines that rhyme. Take one of the groups of phrases and try to transform them into two or four lines that rhyme. (This can be done as a whole group, incorporating individual suggestions; or it can be worked on individually or in small groups, each then reporting to the whole.)
Select a Musical Style or Form - What kind of music would be appropriate to the theme, mood, or cultural identity of our interviewee? What mood should the music convey – spirited and energetic, quiet and peaceful, somber and sad, comical, or inspirational? What kind of music did our interview subject say he/she liked. Should we try to write music in that style? Or, should we write music in a traditional style from our interview subject’s country of origin?
Add Melody and Rhythm - As rhyming sections emerge, would someone like to try to sing a couple of the lines (i.e., make up a melodic phrase)? Or, would someone like to say this section a couple of times over, but give it a beat as you say it (i.e., make up a rhythm). If not, let’s play a chord or two on the guitar, and see if that helps us come up with a melody or rhythm. [OR: Take an existing song — either traditional to the interviewee’s native country, or a song they like, or a song the class (and the teacher!) are familiar with — and use it as a template upon which to write a new lyric.]
Give It Structure and Form - Do we have a section that sounds (lyrically and/or musically) like a verse — sections that move the story along? Or, do we have a chorus — a section that repeats and that captures or sums up the theme of the song? Or, do we have a section that can work as a bridge — a section that crosses the song over from the main part of the story to a new and culminating part?
Put It All Together - In groups (or as a class), let’s work on the sections and bring them together.
Keep It Interesting - Just as a story needs to move to different places, so, the music has to move out of its loop of melodic verse repetition into a chorus that sounds different, and that usually lifts the song – in melody and spirit. A bridge or even a spoken word section is another way to move the story along, change the melody and/or the rhythm, and keep it interesting.
Give It a Title - Do we have a title? The title helps define the message of the song.
Edit and Revise - The process of writing a song is like a journey to an unknown country: exploring new combinations of words, new feelings and images, new ways of telling and re-telling a story, new melodies and rhythms. But have we taken on too much baggage? Do we have too many verses or too many subjects or words in the lyric? Have we kept to our theme or themes, or have they been lost along the way? Have we gotten a bit carried away in our journey and are we beginning to feel a little lost? Do we need to return to the familiar roots of the song: the catchy phrase or melody that repeats (i.e., the “hook”); the central story line; the central image or feeling? Do the melodies of the different sections work and flow together?
Perform It and Pass It On - Once the pieces begin to fit, the song comes to life – when we sing it. And it takes on a life of its own when it’s then sung and played in new and different ways – by other people!
Resources for Oral History Projects
We have found the following resources useful in designing oral history projects with students:
Brown, Cynthia Stokes. Like It Was: A Complete Guide to Writing Oral History . NY: Teachers & Writers Collaborative, 1988.
Dickson, Diane Skiffington et al. The Oral History Project: Connecting Students to Their Community, Grades 4-8. Portsmouth , NH : Heinemann, 2006.
Rogovin, Paula. Classroom Interviews: A World of Learning. Portsmouth , NH : Heinemann, 1998. |
