Most families have photos that record significant events in the family history. Students at Bonny Eagle Middle School have been studying family photos, mostly old, in an effort to learn the stories behind the pictures.
The students have interviewed family members to find out what they could about the people and events that fashioned their family histories.
Seventh grade students, working in Mark Norton’s Language Arts class, have scanned in old family photos and have gathered information about their relatives.
Ashlee Lachance interviewed her mom about a picture of her mother with her grandmother. “It’s really fun,” she says of the project. “I learned that my mother had really blonde hair when she was young.” Other students had a good time learning and researching as well.
“It’s better than writing a story about something. I had to find out things about my grandparents instead of writing about something boring,” said Derek Smith. His project was about his grandfather who joined the Marines when he was 16. He had lied about his age back in 1941 so he could help with the war efforts. Derek said “he threw his medals overboard on the way home because he didn’t want to think anymore about the war.”
Victoria Pease completed a project about her great grandmother called “Swedish Blood.” Her grandmother Dangy Swevson immigrated to America around the turn of the century. Victoria said, “I knew something about her, but I learned a lot more. I knew she had grown up in Sweden and that she grew up on a farm, but I found out about her life after she came to this country. One of the things she did was to work as a maid for a wealthy family.”
The students will post some of their finished projects on a Web page linked to the middle school. Joanne Gauley, Technology Associate, scanned in the photos that the students brought in and created a Web page for their work. All of the students agreed it was fun to learn about their families’ histories.
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