ABOUT THIS PAGE: The following links are possible curriculum ideas that you might wish to try in your classroom. As I said in the introduction, my hope is that you use these to help establish or enhance the style and method of teaching that work best for you in your classroom. As such, you will notice that the curricular descriptions are somewhat loose. I recommend that you use them as a guideline for developing your own lesson plans -- a launching pad for your own programs. After all, everyone has a different amount of time and resources, not to mention students. Regardless, I hope you find these helpful.

War Stories:

• This link provides over two hundred short stories written by Vietnam Vets and those who know them. You could print a story for each student and ask him/her to read it and respond to it for homework. Questions they could consider answering in a paragraph or informal essay include identifying the author and his/her biases; interpreting the events of the narrative; analyzing the emotion of the author. Based on the gap between when the story occurred and when it was written, what impact has time had on the perspective and tone of the story? Is the author nostalgic? Sad? How might the story help someone to interpret the Vietnam War in new ways? These responses could then be the catalyst to a discussion about the War and how it's perceived today, especially in comparison between those who participated in it and those who did not.

Statistics:

• This link provides numerous interesting facts and counterfacts about the War. Possibilities here include providing students with a copy of the page and then asking them to analyze it as a whole. Why was it produced? What is it trying to accomplish? It might also be interesting to use this page to address the concept of fact versus opinion. For example, the page claims to be stating facts (and providing the sources for them -- which would also be a worthwhile exercise: investigating sources), yet it clearly has an agenda. How do the students deal with this apparent conflict of interests? It might also be interesting to compare the ideas on this page to those provided on the History Channel's, especially as they relate to the Domino Theory.

Politics at Home:

• This link provides a data base of information about the tumultuous Presidential Election of 1968, with special emphasis on the Democratic Convention. An interesting assignment would be to create a mock roundtable discussion, in which students represented different interested parties in Chicago at that time. For example, some of them could be the Chicago police department, Mayor Daley's office, the Democratic hopefuls, the Republican onlookers, the media and press, and of course the protestors. This site alone would provide ample research information for all of those factions and more. Other possibilities with this page include analyzing the political cartoons provided within. An assignment there might be to discuss the meaning of the different cartoons, and then have the students draw their own versions for homework.

Who Served?

• This site is a demographics profile of the men and women who served in the Vietnam War. An interesting assignment might be to print this out (as well as the related link dealing with war casualties) and use it as a basis for discussion about who served in the war and what happened to them. In conjunction with other sites devoted to women, you could generate some lively conversation in regards to race, gender, and class as it related war service.

Leaving Memories:

• This page contains pictures of six objects that were left at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The site asks students to consider why someone chose to leave each of the items, and what significance it may have. There are also other links on this page that you might wish to explore for further ideas.

A Generation of Music:

• This site provides hundreds of songs from the Vietnam War era that you can choose to play if you wish (so be careful -- it takes a long time to download). However, for the purposes of this assignment, I would use it as a resource for gathering titles of key songs that related to the war. The object would then be to assign a song to each student (or students), and have him/her/them present a report discussing the significance of the lyrics (and artist if possible) to the Vietnam War and American society. The limit here is endless, as you could have the students play the song in class, or perhaps dress up as the artist, or even write their own lyrics to the tune. Another site might also be helpful, as it is easier to download.

The War at Home:

• Titled "Anti-War Demonstrations 1969," this site is part of UMI's Great Events Series, in which articles from the New York Times are used as the basis for lesson plans. This particular one includes the text of an article of the same title and a series of questions and research ideas with which to follow it up.
• Return of POW's from Vietnam, 1973, is another installment of UMI's Great Events Series. As the title indicates, this essay deals with the issue of POWs and their uneasy return from the war. A list of questions and research ideas are included here as well.