By this point in the sequence the students should (hopefully!) have some background knowledge about 20th century China and Chairman Mao, so it's time to drill down into one of the big grey areas of history - the Cultural Revolution.
Euphemistically-named, the Cultural Revolution is one of the great largely-unacknowledged tragedies of the 20th century. Many historians have plainly said that they still don't fully understand what happened during this time; that the motivation for an entire society to systematically and brutally destroy its own culture is beyond understanding. With that in mind, how should we approach teaching it to 15 year olds?
In short; we avoid taking a comprehensive approach.
When given such a limited amount of time (my school's Year 10 History classes are spread out as 4 lessons a fortnight) it's nigh impossible to examine this event in enough detail. This is doubly relevant when we consider that most historians find it impossible to do it across an entire career, so it would have been foolish for me to even try (not that I'm always above such folly!)
Therefore, the main purpose of this lesson is to examine Mao's role in the Cultural Revolution, which should focus our attention somewhat.
Step 1
Teacher hands out sheet (Resource 4-1), which contains a five paragraph summary of the Cultural Revolution. Read through as a class (teacher either reads while class reads along, or you can have students take turns reading aloud). Students then have a go at answering the question at the end of the sheet, which asks them to begin making judgments about Mao's role in the way China's society changed in the 20th century. It also implicitly introduces the idea of a 'Cult of Personality' - something which will become more relevant and significant should students choose to do Modern History (especially if they study Russia and Stalin).
Step 2
Here's the grammar bit. Project Resource 4-2 onto your board and ask your students to examine the word bank to the side. Note the use of the phrase "some of these words". Tell the students that this is a hidden text and that they have to guess which words from the word bank would fit in a description of the Cultural Revolution. They should be able to do since they've just come hot off of Resource 4-1. As they tell you words, pick a few random but workable spots for these to go. The trick is that there is no actual hidden text, you are actually getting your students to engage in a joint text construction exercise. Once you have a few big content words up on the board tell the students to fill in the rest of the blanks to turn it into a paragraph.
This open-ended variation on the tried-and-true cloze passage activity is a good way to build student confidence in composing paragraphs. By telling them that it is a 'hidden' text, and by doing it as a class activity, you take the risk factor out of the equation for the students. They don't have to risk looking like they don't know how to write a paragraph as this exercise scaffolds them in both a practical and a psychological way.
Afterwards, if the majority do it successfully, you're welcome to tell them that there was no original text and that they all just wrote their own paragraph about the Cultural Revolution.
Step 3
No study of 1960s/70s China would be complete without a look at Chairman Mao's infamous book of quotations, the Little Red Book. Students should be familiar with this text from Step 1 of this lesson (it's mentioned in Resource 4-1) . Get students to work in groups examining the text, I've abbreviated it somewhat as Resource 4-3.
Students are to choose 3-5 quotes from the Little Red Book and explain their meaning in their books. The teacher should pick a quote first and put it up on the board, demonstrating some methods to decode the meaning. This may include using text chains (which students should remember from Lesson 1), or the teacher modelling other techniques for inferring the meaning of previously unknown words (EG. Getting the gist by looking at the sentence around the word, swapping the word for other words that might fit, looking up the definition, etc).
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Students aren't expected to read the whole text but it's important that they're given the booklet to look at rather than just one page-long extract as this places a larger degree of choice into their hands. This harks back to the Focus on Reading stuff I mentioned in the Lesson 3 breakdown - students are more likely to engage with reading if they are given some choice in the matter. With that in mind, several sections of the Little Red Book have been presented so students can pick an area that may be of more interest to them than others.
Step 4
If you have time, or have students that you want to extend, pose the discussion question, "Is The Little Red Book good or bad?" This would work well as a class evaluation and can be done on the board as a table if you have enough opinionated students. Critical engagement with historical sources like this can lead to some interesting debates within the class room. Links to resources:
Resource 4-1: Recap of the Cultural Revolution
Resource 4-2: Cultural Revolution
Resource 4-3: Little Red Book
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