A fun project to make history fun for my students?

just a quick thought – not too much detail but how about trying by starting off using notion of revolution from the kids’ point of view – ie – have them break into groups and develop a rule – based on society rules, (not a rule like allow gum at school), but something serious, and then allocate role play roles to them – one is the rule maker, and the others are members of society – working class etc and talk about how this rule will affect them, then get in the mindset of the workers/people of Mao era and in china.(after some introduction of Mao and all that goes with it).

Beforehand, or even later also as it could work both ways – the concept of revolution will need to be explored – ask the kids what they think the word means, any revolutions they know about and why/how they occur, and then go into Mao and china as a major revolution to be focussed on.

allow the kids to use the internet of course, and they could also write a protest statement from the point of view of one of the people in china at the time as an individual piece of work – could be written as a diary, or a letter of protest, or a speech at a rally and so on..

For lower functioning kid’s, some set questions to research will provide the boundries so they don’t feel so overwhelmed, but they would be able to participate in the group activities.

A whole class mural depicting Moa and the chinese people and the town and landscape and whatever you want to do I guess…what are the objectives of the unit and what do you want the kids to have achieved at the end?

go even further and visit a chinese museum and or temple, experience chinese food and do a whole culture study on China?

I am not a secondary trained teacher but am primary and special ed trained and have been in the field for 17 years.

You could google Mao/teaching ideas and see what you find too.

Hope this gets some thoughts going.

Have fun!!