A collection of guides, tools, strategies and project examples to help you explore the history of your region while working in various subject areas and through related processes.

People as Starting Points

There are many ways to begin to think, plan and organize your foray into doing local history with your students.  Here are a few entry points to consider.

Empathy Processes - Questions to ask about people then and now
"Empathy is a good place to start a project, and also a good rule of thumb for life.  It marks not just a place to begin but a way to discover who we are. ...  Empathy is inclusive, because it considers as valuable everyone who lives or has lived in a place." Here are a few tools and ideas to help you and your students empathize ➦ 

Cultural Reflections and Protocols
As preparation for meeting with people, educators might wish to get students familiar with issues of cultural understanding, protocols to follow, and then maybe tools for project planning and interview guides." Here are a few guides you could use ➦ 

Questions to ask yourself and others
"Focusing on a historical period in history class can serve to narrow your field. Conversely, emphasizing an issue, such as immigration or land rights, helps to temporarily broaden the interval of the time you are studying.  Once you choose a starting point, you might need to ask yourself more specific questions." Here are a few guides you could use ➦

Documents, Artifacts, Images - Traces We Can Find
Entry points to learning about a region will involve both people and places... and you will learn from and examine further through a variety of types of traces. Sometimes those traces can be found through interviews, through site visits, by examining photographs, documents, objects or artifacts.

Interviews
Here are a few graphic organizers and questionaire tools to help you organize your interviews.  Click here to access our developing list  ➦ 

Artifacts, buildings, sites and other physical traces
Here we will gather tools and strategies for examining objects, buildings, monuments and other physical traces around your neighbourhood, or during class visits to Museum locations, or Historical sites.  Techniques like examining images or photographing locations yourself will be featured.  Click here to access our developing list  ➦ 

Research
Here we will collect examples to help you research further, investigate, gather and process information about your local region.  Click here to access our developing list  ➦ 

Here you will find sample learning scenarios for making Curriculum Connections -   and for doing local history within and across your subject-area competencies and other methodologies. 

Featured:  ARTS UDL Local History Activity Models

Click here to view the English version in a separate window.   |  (Version français ici.)

Additional Arts resource collections

Visit our developing padlets of resources to be use in project work in the Arts:

Portraits:   Visit Padlet here

Monologues:  Coming soon!

Digital Competency UDL Local History Activity Models

Browse below, or Click here to view our English version.  Cliquez ici pour la version française.  

Step-by-step student checklists are embedded into the five activity models below. Click here to access them in English. In line with UDL, these checklists aim to optimize individual choice and autonomy. Educators can present all five activities. Then, students can select which activity to complete and monitor their individual progress using the checklists.

L'HISTOIRE LOCALE À TRAVERS LES DÉMARCHES ET PRODUCTIONS FLS

Cliquez ici 

Other examples of Local History projects to browse:

Community Profiles and Portraits
An engaging multidisciplinary project to address elementary Social Science, ELA & Art outcomes?  Students explore history in a way that strengthens their relations with local people and places.   Visit the project outline and tools here! 

Quebec Society between 1905 and 1980
Students use images to activate prior knowledge, and do consider changes.  With the help of videos and online documents, students use an art process to describe life in these times. View Google slidedeck here 

Local History Treasures – Information Recorder Sheet
A tool to help you Write down three potential treasures, describe unique objects, and consider the historical details surrounding the object and who, where, what was involved in your community.  View the recorder sheet here.

Indigenous connections to a local village: Abenaki example
A sample activity starting with a few maps of W8banaki territory. Students then the area research both in terms of what happened to Indigenous groups and the history of a target village.  View the two maps and the process suggestions here.