Connecting the 5 Themes of Geography to History: A Vietnam War Museum Exhibit Project

In our unit on the Vietnam War, I wanted students to understand more than just the political timeline. I wanted them to see how geography—region, place, movement—shaped the war in real and lasting ways. So we tried something new: a museum exhibit project organized around the Five Themes of Geography.

Students worked indepentendly or with a partner, researching and designing exhibits that connected the war to at least three of the five themes of Geography: Location, Place, Human-Environment Interaction, Movement, and Region. Each project needed to include one artifact or display per theme, plus a short written explanation for each artifact. Some chose slide decks, others used poster board or dioramas. One student built a diorama with a LEGO helicopter hovering over a dense jungle scene, with tiny soldiers navigating the terrain below—an attempt to show how U.S. military strategy was shaped by Vietnam’s landscape.

But what stood out most wasn’t the creativity—it was the thinking behind it.

One group mapped the Ho Chi Minh Trail and started asking questions about how supply routes worked when the U.S. had air superiority. Another pair created a display comparing two regions—North and South Vietnam—and added flags, photos, and quotes from leaders. Their write-up started with a basic explanation of political divisions, but by the end, they were asking whether the war had been inevitable once the country was split in half.

The conversation that followed was where the real learning happened:
“Did the U.S. understand the geography at all?”
“Is Agent Orange still affecting the land?”

The five themes gave students a structure, but it also opened up space for curiosity and deeper questions. And I noticed how often they circled back to human experiences—refugees, tunnels, the weight of the environment on both soldiers and civilians.

One student, after reading about the Cu Chi tunnels, asked if he could build a cutaway model for the Human-Environment Interaction theme. He wanted to show how people adapted, not just how they suffered. Another brought in a story her grandfather had shared—he’d served in Vietnam but never talked about it until recently. Her group included a short excerpt of his memory, printed on a card next to their display about Movement.

There was more movement, more discussion,  and more mess with a project like this—but it was productive mess. I observed students fact-checking timelines. Others were figuring out how to label terrain features in a way that would make sense to someone seeing it for the first time.

Standards were covered—students used maps, analyzed primary sources, explained cause and effect—but what I appreciated most was how the project encouraged them to slow down and think spatially. They weren’t just memorizing what happened; they were piecing together how and why it happened where it did.

We spent the last day presenting exhibits in a gallery walk. I encouraged students to leave sticky notes with questions or connections. Some wrote, “I didn’t know there was so much jungle,” or “This reminds me of the war in Ukraine now."

If you're planning a Vietnam War unit and looking for a way to bring in geography that feels meaningful—not just maps for the sake of maps—this project might be worth trying. It brings together research, analysis, creativity, and conversation in a way that traditional assessments often don’t. And the questions students ask along the way? They’re the kind that stay with them.

If you’d like a copy of this lesson, you can find it here.

You can find my Vietnam War Bundle here.