11 Modern History - Vietnam Independence Movement – Jigsaw activity (group work investigating source

This is a set of resources for a student centred lesson which utilises a cooperative learning strategy known as ‘Jigsaw.’ The “Jigsaw Method” is a teaching strategy of organizing student group work that helps students collaborate and rely on one another. This teaching strategy is effective as it gives students a greater sense of individual responsibility. It works well in modern history as it teaches students to read sources, locate information relevant to their question and write a synthesised summary combining ideas from multiple sources and perspectives.

1. A 87 handout full of sources about a range of different topics including: Viet Cong, peasant experiences in the Vietnam War, the Australian presence in Vietnam, Colonialism in Vietnam, The My Lai massacre and Ideologies, causes and effects. Each ‘expert’ group only needs one copy of the sources for their topic. This forces students to engage with the materials and take their own notes so that they can teach their peers about the topic. (However, depending on your group sizes you may choose to provide two copies). This is also a great resource for uploading in full to One Drive / Class Notebook for students to use as inspiration when selecting their topic to investigate for their research essay.

2. A PowerPoint designed for running the lesson so you can see how the groups were set up for a small class size (10 students). There is also information behind the reference slide about the Jigsaw strategy for teachers who are interested in learning further about this pedagogy. In essence, Jigsaw is a cooperative learning strategy that enables each student of a “home” group to specialize in one aspect of a topic. Students meet with members from other groups who are assigned the same aspect, and after mastering the material, return to the “home” group and teach the material to their group members. With this strategy, each student in the “home” group serves as a piece of the topic’s puzzle and when they work together as a whole, they create the complete jigsaw puzzle. The fact that they have the opportunity to listen to the perspectives of others enhances the quality of their education. Through this activity they will become better at paying attention to their peers, reflecting on what they have learned and asking good questions

**NB: Resources designed for the new senior Modern History syllabus (implemented in QLD in 2019). The content would also be useful more broadly for students in other states and countries with an interest in the Vietnamese Independence Movement (1945-1975). The other resources are also available in my store - lrigb4. The end of term assessment for this unit was an essay.
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