Opener/Hook

1. As a class, have students view the brief video as a review (Overview of Genocide in Cambodia) provided by the Baylor Institute of History that is two minutes long: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swq2dCW65fw 

2. As a review activity, have students create a word association bubble or word cloud (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/word-cloud or http://wordcloud.cs.arizona.edu/description.html) with words, phrases, key words, images, emotions, etc. that come to their mind when they think about the Cambodian Genocide. Suggest that they use any materials from previous class lessons. Students may also use an online free word cloud generator to create one. 

3. Provide time for students to complete it on their own or invite them to complete a word cloud in pairs. 

4. On the whiteboard or screen, have students share out their word association additions as individuals, pairs or in groups.

5. After the class has reviewed their collective understanding of the Cambodian Genocide gathered from previous lessons, give students two to five minutes to complete the sentence frame in order to define the historic event on their own or in pairs:

   • The Cambodian Genocide can be defined as __________________________ . 

6. Have students look at the the UN and Geneva Convention’s definition of genocide: https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml

   • The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was signed in December 1948 and has been in force since January 1951. Article II of the convention defines genocide as ANY of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:

     1. Killing members of the group.

     2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group.

     3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.

     4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.

     5. Forcibly transferring children of one group to another group.

7. Invite student to share their thoughts on whether the events in Cambodia should be considered a genocide.

8. Invite students to share their answers. This can be done as a whole class discussion or pair share. 

Interaction with first source

1. Students will be reminded of our larger learning goal and the contemporary relevance of the historical topic. Students will look at events/periods in Cambodian history that led to the Cambodian genocide.
2. Have students form groups of three or four. Teachers will assign groups a number one through three. Based on their assigned numbers, groups will be responsible for the following source:
   1. Group 1 will look at the French Colonial period
      • Source: https://cambodiatribunal.org/history/cambodian-history/ 
   2. Group 2 will look at the the Vietnam War in Cambodia
      • Source: https://www.ushmm.org/genocide-prevention/countries/cambodia/war-closes-in 
   3. Group 3 will look at the Cambodian Civil War
      • Source: https://cambodiatribunal.org/history/cambodian-history/khmer-rouge-history/ 
3. Have each group create a poster (digital or physical) with the following information:
   • Identify the dates of their topic.
   • A short paragraph explaining their topic.
   • A summary of how this time period negatively affected Cambodia citizens. Specifically address how human rights were denied to many.
   • Once posters are done, students will complete a gallery walk to build a general understanding of what was happening in Cambodian history before the reign of the Khmer Rouge. Students should walk from poster to poster and take notes. 
4. As a class, discuss the following based on details from the poster activity: What changes and continuities exist for the Khmer people before during, and after the Cambodian Genocide?

Interaction with second source: 

1. Students will read about how the Cambodian Genocide altered the life of one specific person and create a timeline of their life in order to compare experiences or patterns in multiple survivor’s stories
2. Pair students off and give them the role of Student A and Student B.
3. Assign each student of the pair one of two survivor stories to read and analyze.
   • Student A: Som Sila and Lam Sena https://www.dccam.org/survivors/som-sila-and-lam-sena-students/
   • Student B: Hong Kimtry https://dccam.org/survivors/hong-kimtry-nurse 
4. After students have read their assigned story, have them create a timeline for the events in their stories. The timeline can include five to seven major events. Although each student in a partnership will have a different survivor to learn about and from, walk them through each portion of the activity so they have a recommendation for how long they should be spending on each mini-activity. 
   • Start students off by identifying the ‘fast facts’ after their first read of the source.
   • Then, have them construct a timeline after they read the source for a second time. On one side, the timeline has key words, phrases or images of the survivor’s life pre-Khmer Rouge regime, and the right side has descriptions of their life during the regime. This can be done on paper or digitally.
   • On the bottom, students summarize how the Khmer Rouge impacted the life of their assigned survivor.
5. After they have completed the last mini-activity, students will read aloud their answers to their partners and after listening to their partner, write down the summary. 
6. Together, each pair will create a claim that summarizes how the Cambodian Genocide impacted the lives of people living in Cambodia. Students must cite examples from both survivors in their answers.

Closure and Reflection

1. Based on the poster and timeline activity and sources, students will identify how life changed over time for those experiencing the Cambodian Genocide, and how life remained the same over time over time for those experiencing the Cambodian Genocide. Students must cite evidence and information from the resources in the lesson. This reflection can be typed or handwritten.