In Ireland, my culture prizes the art of the story teller. The Seanchaí (shan-a-key) is what we call our traditional storytellers back home. They are the keepers of our local histories and folklore. Back in the day, they would go door to door, village to village, telling their stories for the price of a full belly and a dry bed. They collected more stories whilst they were at it a too.
So much of our identity is formed by where we came from and the people who made us. Exploration into these ideas continue to guide inquiry in Grade 8 LA. This week students shared more stories about the oldest picture in their home. They interviewed family members to find out more about their maternal and paternal family lines. We then took all of that information and started to diagram it into a Simple Family Tree. The process of doing this activated student creativity and desire to dig deeper and find out more about the layers of culture and diversity that each branch of the tree has added to the family. Most students traced back to their great-grandparents and talked about local and global connections from Italy to Iran to the Darfur region. I also heard some fascinating stories about different family trades that students’ family backgrounds.
This weekend, by interviewing various family members, Grade 8LA students will be tracking down the story of their name. Next week we will begin to plan ways to pull all this information together and identify if there are any other questions about their heritage that students would like to find out more about.