Mao Zedong Reflection

The lesson that I wrote and taught was to teach the students about Mao Zedong and how he came to power using propaganda. At the beginning of the class period Mr. Wood (my cooperating teacher) introduced the historical and general vocab to the class to promote reading. The class then class then dove into the group work where rimary sources were spread throughout the room for students in 5 different small groups to travel through together and discuss what their interoperation of the documents were and how they displayed either the state of China or what Mao Zedong’s ulterior motive behind the document was. This lesson was a small piece of their whole unit which was about single-party states such as; China, Japan, Russia, and Germany. The unit requires them to identify characteristics of how the process of becoming a single-party state

The first thing I would have changed is that I would begin the class with a vague timeline of what happened in China so they have an even deeper understanding of the unit than what they already had and would allow them to make even more connections between the propaganda pieces with the events that occurred in China. I would have also ended the class differently by having the students come together as a whole and discuss what they came up with during their group work and ask them about the similarities and differences with Mao and either Stalin and Hitler. Another interesting question that can come with these types of units is whether or not they see a country that was worse off with their dictator more so than the others. Also if they can identify a leader that was not as bad for their country as the other. Another question that could promote deeper thought and conversation would be if they see anyways that those countries could have prevented this overtaking and if the U.S. is in danger of the same kind of take