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February 1, 2003
Listening to the Walls Talk
By Rosemary Shaw
Background
Everyone loves a good story, especially true stories about things to which they can relate. And certain stories can bring parents, students and local businesses together. You just need to assign your students the task of writing stories about their neighborhoods.
An added bonus would be to encourage the children to find something historical about their homes, the site on which their homes stand, or to encourage them to research an historic home or building in their neighborhood. According to the National Historic Trust: "Historic sites have fascinating, engaging, and compelling stories to tell. Preserving these places, listening to their stories and learning from them are essential to our understanding of who we are."
One example of this type of project is the "Listening to the Walls Talk" project. Its goal is to teach students basic geographic and research skills. A secondary, but possibly more important goal, is to record the history of houses and neighborhoods around the world.
The overview of this project states that: "Every house has a story to tell. Perhaps a house once belonged to the local doctor who made house calls in the middle of blizzards. Or perhaps a president once slept in it. Maybe the house belonged to the daughter of the founder of the town. It could even have belonged to the undertaker! Or maybe the house is brand new. That doesn't mean there isn't a story to tell. That brand new house might be sitting where a famous battle once took place. Or maybe the house sits on what was once the last orange grove or apple orchard in the area. No matter the age of the house- there is a story to be told."
It also doesn't matter if you live in an apartment or condo. Students can talk to the management of the apartment complex and find out who were the owners and what was on the property before there was a complex. The fun is in the discovery for the students. For example, many of my students are researching their apartment complexes. One found out that her apartment complex used to be an orange grove. Another found out that there had been an earlier set of apartments on the site. They were really bad and some of them had to be torn down. The new owners changed the name so people wouldn't associate the new complex with the older apartments. All of these are things that I think make interesting stories. Parents obviously agree. One parent was so excited that he went out and bought some books on local history for my classroom.
Nuts and Bolts
We require each participating class to submit a group project as a Web page telling the story of their neighborhood, complete with scanned pictures, maps and diagrams. We ask them to focus on the architecture, landscape, geography and demographic references.
The project has six phases and requires Web access, Email and Web authoring. To make the best use of this project you should also have the ability to participate in online conferences, online chats, be able to use a digital camera and be able to produce digital files from scanning.
- The first phase of the project is to teach students the five basic themes of geography (location, place, human interaction and the environment, movement and communication, and regions).
- The second phase of the project is to teach the students basic research techniques. The students learn where to look for information and how to look for information. The students learn about online research, and about primary and secondary sources.
- The third phase has the students learning the concepts of historic preservation. Historic places help us understand where we have come from as a society and where we might go in the future. The goal is for these students to gain an appreciation for the artistic and historic heritage that our forefathers have left as revealed in the different types of architecture that can be found throughout the world.
- In the fourth phase of the project the students research their hometown and discover what secrets can be found in their own communities. Who knows what stories are out there waiting to be discovered? There could be a theatre were Rachmaninoff played, and another where Tom Mix and his horse entertained the children. We encourage students to research via the Web and through primary sources such as tax records and town maps. The students gain an appreciation of how to interpret what has happened to their town and become interested in the future of the town.
- The fifth phase has students researching and writing stories about their own homes. Each house, every wall within the house has a story to tell. This is why the project is called Listening to the Walls Talk. In this phase, the students "listen" to the story that their walls have to tell, and then relate this story with accompanying maps and diagrams of their home.
- In the sixth phase of this project, students write stories with accompanying maps about their neighborhood. They turn these stories into Web pages and submit them to the "Listening to the Walls Talk" Web site.
Once published, students from around the world can increase their geographic literacy of places as they compare and contrast their neighborhoods with those from other states and other countries. This project allows students to travel, virtually, to other countries and listen as others describe their homes.
This project also incorporates the use of chats and discussion boards. It's an interesting way to get students from around the world together to discuss the similarities and differences of their homes, and thus learn keen insights into each other's cultures.
This project already has in place lesson plans, a list of National Educational Standards met, additional lessons and resources, and a list of participating schools and those schools who are looking for partners to collaborate with. At the time of writing, schools from across the USA, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan have joined the project.
For more information on this project: Listening to the Walls Talk
Email: Rosemary Shaw
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