Last year StoryCorps launched a new initiative that they called The Great Thanksgiving Listen. The purpose of the project was to get students to interview family members during Thanksgiving weekend. The first year went well as more than 50,000 recordings were made. The project is back for 2016.

The Great Thanksgiving Listen is an initiative intended to facilitate conversations between students and adult family members over Thankgiving weekend. StoryCorps has released a toolkit for teachers to use to guide students in the process of recording interviews with family members. In the toolkit you will find an interview planning sheet and two pages of interview question suggestions. The toolkit recommends using the StoryCorps mobile apps to capture the conversations. The StoryCorps mobile apps includes question prompts and a suggested script for conducting interviews.

NPR’s Steve Inskeep offers five interview tips in the video embedded below.

Applications for Education

Thanksgiving can present a great opportunity for kids to talk with aunts, uncles, grandparents, and other family members that they don’t frequently see during the rest of the year. Participating in the Great Thanksgiving Listen could be a good way to help students facilitate conversations and learn from their elders.