Decide the format

Decide how your students will approach their project work and what forms of research they will undertake. Threads is the showcase through which the work is displayed but the format is up to the teacher and the students. A theme can be the basis of a collection of stories produced by a class. A lot of the emphasis on Threads is about encouraging interviews as a method of historical enquiry but other formats are equally acceptable. It may suit students to confine their research to ‘secondary source’ material and to present a project based on this. There is a huge amount of existing material of this nature available that would support such a study.

Things to consider

How will you show the primary & secondary research in the best light

Will the project be based around ‘secondary source’ material, i.e. books, articles, documents that discuss information presented elsewhere? Or will the focus be on ‘primary source’ research, i.e. photos, letters, or an interview with someone who has direct knowledge of an event? Of course, it could be a combination of several such sources too.

Teams - Will the projects be individual student-based or group-based?

Brainstorm – get the students to decide themselves. Discuss what might be possible and set the limitations.

There are many examples of oral history projects that could help decide what format is most suited to your students and the topic under study. This list is by no means definitive but it should give you an idea for what might be possible:

  • Cork Memory Map: Stories of Cork, past and present, from the Cork Folklore Project
  • Digital Recollections: South Tipperary national schools 2 schools in the area recorded interviews with people in their locality about their recollections.
  • My People My Place: Mapping and folklore project conducted in areas of Co Wexford
  • School Map Project: Project that focuses on children collecting and collating information about their locality
  • Disused Schoolhouses: Photo project looking at abandoned schoolhouses in the Irish landscape
  • Men on the Memorial: Research project exploring the lives of people whose names were found on a memorial to the dead of one village in World War 1.