This resource was created by Leeds Museums and Galleries | The Discovery Centre

The stories on these pages represent just a fraction of the stories that could be told. Use these stories as a springboard to tell your own, reflect on communities, make it personal and relevant for your pupils.

Curriculum Links

• KS1 & 2 History: Local study
• KS1, 2 & 3 PSHE: Living in the wider world

Discussion Ideas

• As a 5 min lesson starter, listen to the audio or watch one of the films. Use this as springboard to open up a discussion or topic about your local community.
• Play one of the films / audio recordings to your class. To develop empathy skills, talk about how the person would be feeling at different moments of their lives. Compare and contrast different experiences. If it’s a historical source, would it be a different experience now?

Activity Ideas

• Use some of the sources to talk about compassion and caring for each other as a PSHE topic. Leeds wants to be a compassionate city and that starts with understanding each other.
• Use the stories as a starting point to do your own intergenerational project. This can take a number of weeks or months. Ask for volunteers from your school community to talk about their life experiences, and work with the children to formulate questions they would like to ask them. Use an ipad, camera or mp3 recorder to record the histories. The children can edit them into films using basic software. You could upload them to the schools website (with the interviewees permission, of course!) Further notes making oral histories can be downloaded here.
• Make a connection with another school in a different part of the city, a different environment or another country. Become penpals, Skype or send films, run an exchange for a ‘day in the life’ or ‘in your shoes’ experience. For an idea of how to do this based on a historical topic, see the Nidderdale Leeds Pals project.