Lesson Plan: Oral History and Interview Skills
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Rationale
Developing interview techniques provides students with new ways of gathering facts and opinions about a subject. When an event such as World War II touches the lives of an entire generation, personal stories of people who experienced these events are often very meaningful.

Materials
Pen, notebooks, access to the World Wide Web, videocamera, access to television, tape recorder.

It's important to share these stories so that they continue to be a part of your community's oral traditions. Here are links to a sample press release you could send out to local media, and to a sample letter of introduction to help your students contact regional historical societies to share their work.

Methods
Interviews require time and practice! Simple questions often work best, especially those using the four W's and an H -Who ,What, When, Where and How.

Here are some basic rules:

• Be sure to explain the reason for the interview.
• Avoid asking questions which invite "yes" or "no" answers as response.
• Practice listening.

Here are a series of exercises to help students develop interviewing skills:

1. Prepare a series of questions based on a popular television program (sitcom, dramatic series, etc.) Interview a classmate using a familiar episode from the program as the subject.

2. Prepare a series of questions about a school event. Intervew two students after the event has ended. Share your observations from this interview with the class. How well did you listen?

3. Choose an event from local history in your community. Research this event using newspapers, tombstones, monuments, plaques, letters. Summarize your information in a news report (Maximum length 400 words). Develop a series of questions about this event. Conduct interviews with (4) people based on your research Ð for example, you could talk with your history teacher, a local museum curator, an elderly local citizen or members of your town council.

4. Choose an event of regional or national significance, and research this event, summarizing in a report (maximum length 400 words). Based on your research, conduct interviews with four people who have expressed interest to you about this event, summarizing the answers they provide to you. Compare the various points of view about the event.

5. To build on the theme of World War II, why not interview women in your community who lived during the war. It's best to use a taperecorder, if available, to document their stories. Be sure to be sensitive Ð not everyone finds it easy to talk about the war. You might want to contact Veteran's Associations for suggestions about whom to interview.