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Classroom Practice/Program

Set 3: What are the names of your parents? What are the birth dates of
your parents? Where were your parents born? Where had your parents lived
before you were born? Do you have any siblings? What are their names
and birthdates? Where were they born? Who are your best friends?
Caution: Some students may not know any of these family items. That
is all right. Encourage focus on friends. Friends can become even more
important than family. Respect is for everyone involved in one’s life.
Related Activity: Have students start an actual family
tree diagram or drawing. The student is the base trunk.
From that trunk, two major limbs emerge, one for mother
and one for father. Friends can be flowers planted at
the base of the tree, brightening the environment.
Set 4: What are the names of your grandparents?
What are their birth dates? Where were they born? If they
were born in a different country, in which country were
they born? Are they still living? If not, when did they
die? What was the cause of death? Where did they die?
Caution: These questions are more difficult. Encourage
students to document the research process, including where they looked for
information or to whom they spoke. Emphasize process over lack of information.
Related Activity: Give a few minutes of class over to problem solving.
Allow a student who has hit a genealogy wall to share the problem. Perhaps
another student can provide advice. Sharing problems and reaching mutual
solutions aids in generating respect. Provide each student with a map and
encourage marking the map for family births or living locations. Post a
large map on the bulletin board. Use map pins for students to mark birth or
living locations. Look for common places. Commonalities help generate
respect as cultures and living locations in common become evident.
Set 5: Ask students where they can find more information about
grandparents, great grandparents, and additional relatives. Asking those same
early project questions about ancestors will broaden the scope of the project.
Caution: Not all students will have access to the same information
sources. Provide a list of Internet websites for easy searching. Remind
students that sometimes having a little information can provide more
data than they suspect. For example, knowing what country ancestors
came from could provide insight on food choices. Also, caution students
not to use sites that charge a fee or offer a free trial for subscription.
Related Activity: Start a bulletin board list of useful websites. Have
students add to the list when they find a good, searchable source. Be
sure to have each student add his or her name as contributor for each
list item. Sharing useful information helps generate respect.
Set 6: Where is the common ground? This is the stage for students to make
a list of commonalities. This might be places, dates, preferences, countries, or
anything that the students have in common with anyone they have found in their
research. Should a student’s tree be totally bare, with no personal data found,
have that list be of commonalities with friends and classmates. Commonalities
lead to respect. Differences are not as important when viewed in the context

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