I’ve periodically published about StoryCorps’ “The Great Listen” over the years.

Though its billed as a Thanksgiving activity, this oral history project can be done at anytime.

Students  – and teachers, too (I did it with my in-laws) – interview an older family member and upload it to the StoryCorps archive.

They have tons of preparatory materials on their site.

I only did it once in class with English-proficient students, and the process went quite well.  I think it could be done with ELL students fairly easily, with their interviewing family members in their home languages, translating it with Google Translate into English, and then using some of that text for English instruction.

Here are a couple of other articles on using oral history activities with students:

Listening is an Act of Love is from CollectEDNY.

The Benefits of Oral History Projects for Multilingual Learners is from Edutopia.

And here’s a promotional video author Jason Reynolds has done for this year’s Great Listen: