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This Quiet Lady and The Sky Was Blue : starting points for exploring family history, continuity, and concepts of self and community. |
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In
these two books, which share a web page here
(This
Quiet Lady / The Sky
Was Blue),
Charlotte uses the medium of a little girl looking at family photographs
to discover where she fits into the family and indeed, life
itself. While
The Sky Was Blue goes back several generations and explores |
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 If
you looked at pictures of your family, what stories would they
tell? |
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Do
you believe that the "important things will always be the same," the
main idea in The Sky Was Blue? Does that mean that what changes
is unimportant? |
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| The little girl at the end of This Quiet Lady says that her birth is where she begins; is that true? | |
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Where did your father begin? Your mother? Their fathers and mothers? How
far back can
you
go? |
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| Not just for the very young: using these books as a stepping stone to developing researching and documentary skills | |
| Everyone --- whether they’re an adult, a middle-school aged kid, or yes, even a sulky, hormonal adolescent --- loves being read aloud to. Perhaps we have some deep shared human thread that dates back to being members of primitive tribes, gathered around a campfire and telling stories, being read out loud to is soul-satisfying, and both soothing and energizing. Try reading either or both of these books aloud, even to older students, and you will be amazed at how much more easily students approach and develop the skills of doing research and documentary history. Suddenly, it becomes self-evident; they are learning, at some level, to tell their own stories, to locate themselves in time and place, and to find meaning, continuity and strength in this location. And telling our stories is a primal human need; in fact, one might almost say, it is what makes us human. |
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| Here are questions for the classroom, based on these books, to go side-by-side with developing research skills. | |
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Where does our town, city, county, or state begin? Where does our school
begin? |
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When did my family become part of this place? How? What brought them
here? Why? |
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What stories are told in my family about beginnings? Who tells them? Do
I tell my stories, about who and where I am, and why, to anyone? Who?
(Friends? Younger brothers or sisters?) |
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What
other ways besides photographs do we have to explore what the lives of
people here before us were like? |
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| Ideas for extended projects | |
| The classroom as living history museum: Students might bring in family photographs and tell stories about them, take snapshots of each other and write captions for them, keep diaries, visit museum exhibits, or look at old photographs of their communities. They might create their own exhibit, in the classroom or public spaces of the school, and tour younger students through, acting as docents or curators. | |
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Tying history
and research to imagination in English or Creative Writing:
After looking at long-ago, early photographs of unnamed people in the
community, have students |
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