People

 
Broadcast: 7 Jan 2002, 11.20 - 11.40 am, BBC Radio Ulster, MW
 

 
This first programme deals with various aspects of ‘people’: relationships within the family and between classmates; people’s personalities, likes and dislikes, interests, jobs.

When Mary’s and Joe’s teacher asks the class to find out more about their family histories, she sparks off competition between them. Mary and Joe have a love-hate relationship, and each wants to have the longer family tree, the more famous relation. They interview their respective parents and unearth interesting family stories. There is an amusing twist at the end.

The programme offers relevant cross-curricular links with History. References to the Titanic, World War 2, street rhymes, and old occupations correlate perfectly with the NI curriculum and offer excellent opportunities for discussion and writing.
 

 
family tree; vertical; horizontal; generations; relations; connections; cemetery; ancestors; rivalry; gravestones; reconciling; headstone
 

Whole class:

• Devise a questionnaire to help the children find out about their family history. Discuss what type of information they would like to find out: names, dates of birth, personalities, jobs, where they lived, and so on. Discuss with them the persuasive wording needed to elicit relevant responses.
• Miss Brown describes the two characters Joe and Mary as ‘like two peas in a pod’. Using Worksheet 4, get the children to make a list of other similes.
• Discuss the type of relationship that Joe Burns and Mary Connelly have in class (rivals/ competitive/ love-hate relationship).
• Discuss why Mary’s great-granddad might have lost touch with his family. How would his father have felt, or his children? Discuss reasons why a family might break up and ways of coping for children.
• Design a list of rules for the black-out.

Pair or individual work:

• Ask the children to write a short biography about a relation in their family tree. It could be entitled ‘A story worth telling’.
• Encourage the children to ask their parents and grandparents if they know of any street rhymes, like The Doffer’s Song or ‘Are you a man or a mouse’.
• Get the children to write down a well-known family story that has become part of family folklore.
• Use Worksheet 1 for the children to complete Mary’s and Joe’s family tree.
• Ask the children to draw up their own family tree or family rings (see Worksheet 2). They could also draw up a fantasy family tree with their favourite sports-people, film stars, and so on.
• Encourage the children to visit the local cemetery or old family tombs. Which child in the class can find the oldest headstone? Can they collect some grave rubbings to show the other children?

 
WORKSHEETS

 
Click on the arrows below to download the worksheets for either this programme, or all the worksheets for this series.