If you’ve been a long time reader of this blog, you would know that I love history. A lot of my favourite projects have been history related, and some of my best work has come from these projects. This particular history project was right up my alley, as it managed to cover so many topics. Essentially, our class had a series of presentations on events from the second half of the 20th century. The only restraint we had was that we had to find a topic that was mentioned in the song “We Didn’t Start the Fire” by Billy Joel.
The aim of this project was to create “lesson plans” for other teachers to use, so we started this project off by learning about how to structure a lesson plan. We learned about different forms of pedagogy, like constructivism, behaviourism, and liberationism. PLP generally follows a constructivism approach in the classroom, but for this project the class decided it would be best to follow a lesson plan similar to behaviourism.
My lesson plan was focused on Dien Bien Phu and the Vietnam War. Dien Bien Phu, found on line 16 of “We Didn’t Start the Fire”, was a battle between the Vietnamese and their French occupiers in 1954. Following the Vietnamese victory, the country was split into two sides and kicked off the Vietnam War, which ended in 1975. If you want to learn more about these topics, you can go through my lesson plan on our class website, where you can find my presentation, notes, an interview with a refugee from the Vietnam War, and my classmates lesson plans.
Dien Bien Phu and the Vietnam War pdf
One of the biggest focuses for my presentation was the fact that media and photography played a huge role in the Vietnam War and how it was received back in the United States. I made an effort to include as many photos as possible in my presentation because of how important media was in the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War was not the first to have horrible war crimes committed, but it was the first to have those war crimes documented and shown to the public. This was a big role in the anti-war movement that sprung up in the United States. I tried to put a lot of effort into the details and the facts from my presentation, and I think it greatly enhanced the keynote.
As for the presentation, I think it went well. One of the big requirements for the presentation was that we had to come up with an activity for the class. I decided to start out my presentation with a quick group discussion about what the class knew about Dien Bien Phu and the Vietnam War. I finished off my presentation by trying to start a class debate about whether the United States should’ve entered the Vietnam War in the first place. Unfortunately the entire class said no, but that is probably on me because I didn’t properly describe the political climate of the time and the fear that Americans had about communism. One thing that I wished I did better was articulate ideas and thoughts. I felt like I had stuttered a lot during the presentation, and a couple questions stumped me largely because I didn’t know a lot outside of what I had researched. If I could go back, I would’ve spent more time planning out the presentation so there was a better flow to what I was saying.
One of the other keystones for this project was an interview with someone who either knew about, experienced, or researched our event. I chose my topic specifically because of my heritage, and that I would have so many good people to talk to. I ended up talking to my great aunt, who was born in Saigon and left Vietnam when she was around 8. It was really great talking to her, because she had so many stories about my family’s journey to Canada. I said before that my best projects are history related, but even more so when I can learn about something directly related to me. Learning about my family’s past, especially when it’s something that affects my immediate family, was very interesting and I’m happy that I chose this topic.
This was definitely one of my stronger projects this year. I always produce my best work in history projects, and this was no exception. I am proud of my presentation and my performance in this project. Not only did I put thought and effort into my own presentation, but I also worked to be an active participant when others were presenting. I made sure to ask questions and learn more about the topics in my own time. If I were to do something differently in this project I would spend more time researching the world at the time, instead of just about Vietnam. One of the questions that stumped me was about the Cambodian genocide in 1975 and how that might’ve impacted the Vietnam War, but to be quite frank I didn’t know anything about the event at all. Still, this was a very successful project for myself and I hope I enjoy the rest of my project as much as I enjoyed this one.