What is oral history?
Oral history is a way to learn about past events from the spoken stories of people who lived through them.
This can be with family members or members of the community. It generates and preserves historically interesting information – a primary source material.
We wrote letters to the residents of Sanford House care home in Dereham to see if they would take part in our oral history activities. We asked them questions about their school day memories.
We learnt that many of the residents struggle with their eye sight or holding a pen so they had help to type their letters. They told us that our letters brought smiles and giggles to their faces as they evoked many lovely, long-forgotten memories.
It was interesting to make comparisons between our school days and theirs’. A lot of facts about school life during war time will help us with our other learning in history.
