The oral history clips and resource can be used to support students discovering their surroundings as they were in the past. Students can listen to a variety of these short (less than 3 minutes) audio clips and hear residents talking about how they used to travel around the Forgotten Landscape. Children can then use the resource to help them create a magnificent piece of descriptive writing about a journey in the past that they could have been on. The power point and lesson guide supports teachers through the process of listening to the oral histories and includes word mats and key questions to help students produce their best descriptive writing.

What is the educational case for using oral histories in literacy teaching ?

• By listening to non-fiction they cannot yet read for themselves, students begin to understand how to describe events and surroundings personal to them.
• Listening to and discussing information establishes the foundations for their learning in other subjects.
• Students begin to understand how experiences of others differ from their own.
• Through listening, students learn how language sounds and increase their vocabulary and awareness of grammatical structures.