My World in Year 8

In ‘My World’ Year 8s have worked on researching their family histories and producing a excellent copies of their family trees. Some of the learners who showed most progress from start to finish have their learning displayed at ‘Touchstones’. See below for one of our learner’s account of the project.

This project has been a challenging one indeed; it’s taught us Year 8 students our identities. Who we are and other questions, which we wouldn’t normally learn the answers to in any other Project. I think it’s important we learnt about ourselves and not just the everyday learning we get in other lessons; I say this because:

Overall, the most challenging part of the whole project must have been searching for names and dates, and items to prove peoples existence. I interviewed probably the oldest relatives I have, and this was probably the only information I actually got which I knew was accurate. But it’s not all names, I then had to find dates. Sometimes opinions of relatives would disagree with each other and I would have to start again, I wanted it to be the truth, and only the truth.

I was relieved when I finally finished the dates and all the relatives confirmed they were correct; although there was nothing to be relieved about, I was about to face (in my opinion) the hardest obstacle in the project. I needed evidence but before even thinking about it I labelled it impossible. I decided I shouldn’t waste my time. This was probably the biggest mistake I’d made throughout the project because I could have found evidence. I had a fixed mind-set (where you don’t believe you can do something) almost immediately after hearing it was essential to get evidence.

In the end I worked incredibly hard and got the evidence I was searching for. Drawing the trees and making sure there were improvements in every new copy was very exciting. The ‘Touchstones’ trip was very interesting. Both drafts of my family tree have gone up on display and it was a great way to conduct such an outstanding project.

Ayesha Irfan, 8:2.