Telling stories - Tiny Treasures

Learning intention

Students become the curator of their own history, sharing stories and information about a personal item of realia with their class. Students learn about sharing an object’s significance, how objects help us to remember things about the past and what details you need to tell a story.

Students will:

  • Explore a range of sources about the past 
  • Develop a narrative about the past 
  • Use a range of communication forms and digital technologies relating to a story about life in the past 

Resources

  • Student objects from home
  • Resources for recording interviews (ie. video recorder, ipads, drawing materials etc)

Activity

Invite students to bring an object that is important to them to school. (If the object is too precious, have parent/carer send a photo of it instead). Encourage students to choose something that they can use to help tell a story about themselves and/or their personal history.

Provide students with some questions to help them select and talk about their special object. For example:

  • When did you first get or find your object? (discovery)
  • What did you think of it when you got or found it? (first impression)
  • Who was with you? (connection)
  • Why did you keep it? (significance)
  • What is the best thing about owning/having it? (meaning/value)
  • If you had to give your special object to someone else, who would it be? (significance)
  • What would you say to them about your object?

Organise students in partners to take turns interviewing each other. These interviews could be collected in a number of ways, consider; recording the interviews with video or audio, asking students to draw the story of their own or their partner’s object, creating a digital story of the object, writing a narrative about the object.

More to explore

Telling Stories - parent resource from the Department of Education and Training

A resource on the benefits of sharing stories within a family. A good resource to share with parents as their children undertake story-telling activities in class.

ABC Splash - A Guide to Storytelling with Your Kids

Tips for parents and teachers on how to share stories with children.