Seniors and Students Learning Together

We are fortunate to live in a town that has many senior citizens. Seniors have enormous amount of knowledge– they have experienced many things and are a part of the local history of this town.
It is not always easy to get the students and the seniors together so this information can be passed on. By having the students read to the seniors the initial contact is made. The students are given the opportunity to improve their reading skills while the seniors are provided with news and company. This also provides the seniors with an opportunity to relate stories to the students from which they will learn the local history.
As part of the project the students will gather information on the seniors and prepare a scrapbook/biography for each one. Depending on the number of seniors in the project there may be several children working together to prepare the scrapbook/biography.
At the end of the project a lunch will be served to all the participants and the students will have the opportunity to present the scrapbook/biography personally.

Update (December 17, 2011)

Students from Pope Memorial visited the senior home in Bury, Quebec in the spring of 2011 to interview the residents and dip into their pasts in order to create biographies of their lives. Students had several topics to guide them in their inquiry, ranging from life as a child, schooling, jobs, adult life etc.. They were all quite intrigued with the wealth of information learned about the history of their new friends. Students were also very surprised to learn how life experiences of the seniors were very different from their own in this modern day. Once all of the data was collected, pupils spent several weeks as authors writing their little biographies, editing, reediting and finally typing the polished product on their computers. They even illustrated their own books. A lot of hard work and time was invested in this project, where both students and seniors enjoyed themselves.