Vietnam

As part of our studies from the excellent My Place television series we’ve been looking at the Vietnam War, particularly the causes of the war and Australia’s involvement. The episode entitled Lily looks at the 1970s and features a character who is an asylum seeker from Vietnam. The programme has allowed us to look at different styles of government, such as communism and democracy, and how different perspectives and interpretations of situations can lead nations into conflict. We also had the opportunity to investigate the differences between asylum seekers and refugees and discovered how events after the war led to an increase in the Vietnamese population in Australia. This topic enabled us to look at Australia’s not so rosy past, in particular the White Australia Policy, and from this we developed our knowledge of the current offshore policies of recent governments.

Last year I was able to spend some time traveling in Vietnam and discovered an amazing country with fabulous, friendly people. The photos below show some of the military hardware left over from the war and myself descending into one of the tunnels used by troops from the then communist North Vietnam.

Underground

Going Underground

US Tank

US Tank

My Place

Our studies on the excellent ABC programme, “My Place” are going extremely well. Not only has it lent itself to some great work with our English studies, but it has also enabled us to begin working backwards through a timeline of Australian historical and social events. So far we have studied the “Stolen Generation”, cricket (in particular Shane Warne’s “Bowl of the Century”), equality and discrimination, the Vietnam War and refugees and asylum seekers. Whilst an in depth study of all these issues and events is impractical, the students are developing a solid background knowledge of how we evolved into the Australia in which we now live.

Podcast

This is a new podcast on The Stolen Generation, a very sensitive and important historical topic for many Australians. The tone of this podcast was more formal than previous ones, given that the students have to use language in a variety of situations. This was a tough task, but the students gave it a really good go. A lot of this podcast was read from a text, but the way the students directed it through their use of language was very good.

 

My Place

This semester we’ll be viewing the excellent ABC children’s drama My Place. The programme follows the life of a house over a period of over 100 years. Various families come and go and we witness their trials and experiences along the way. The house welcomes Aboriginal families, refugees and war veterans, amongst many others, and we experience their challenges and their successes in the context of the unfolding history of Australia. My Place is an excellent, integrated programme for English, history and social studies. Hopefully the students will have lots to blog about from their studies.