Research on the Vietnamese American Community Today
Objectives
- Students will assess their prior knowledge, identify a contemporary issue relevant to Vietnamese Americans, and conduct a research project to share their findings.
Activity
As a class, brainstorm research topics. Ask the questions:
- What do I already know about Vietnamese Americans?
- What do I want to learn more about Vietnamese Americans?
- What contemporary issues do I want to understand more fully that affect the Vietnamese American community or portions of the community (for example, what is relevant to Vietnamese American youth?)
Next, invite students to chose a topic (students may chose the same topic, but encourage various topics to be covered). Students should then spend some time doing the research in the library. Students should have at least 3-5 references from various sources, such as books, periodicals, and/or Websites (refer to the bibliography). Remind students that Web sites must be reputable. The teacher and librarian can help students determine which are reputable.
The topics could be presented in any of the possible media:
- A “newspaper” about what they learned with articles, pictures, editorials, etc.
- Power-point presentations with statistics, photographs, or other information
- Comic book of what they learned
- A play, written and performed (should be recorded on video)
- A diary of reflections and events that transpired that is relevant to this issue
- A five page research paper
Assessment
All students should write a brief paper about what they learned during this project.