Teaching History - Beginner Teachers Session with Jonathan Dallimore

A little while ago I had the pleasure of presenting at the HTA Beginner Teachers Conference. One of the highlights of doing something like this is that it then means I get watch Jonathan Dallimore share his insights into historical thinking. This time around, Jonathan Dallimore's session started with a primary source, introduced with very little context, and the prompt for beginner teachers to read and discuss with the person next to them... what is this source? What do we think of this extract? What can we deduce? 

As some answers were tentatively offered, Dallimore made the point that our lack of orientation and potential confusion was perhaps a reflection of how our students feel when a source is placed in front of him. 

The source transpired to be part of a letter from Dallimore's grandfather, written in 1943, in World War II Germany. The issue is that students often don't have this background knowledge when they look at a source; as History teachers we fall into the trap of looking at sources in isolation, which is contrary to what historians actually do. A historian has a purpose for looking at a source and they know the context of what they're looking at... in fact, more often than not, context is what they start with. 

There's a delicate line that needs to be walked here. There's a need to teach the facts and have students be able to recall these but, also, there's a need to have "an understanding of how historical knowledge is attained, its relationship to evidence, and the way in which historians arbitrate between competing or contradictory claims." (Peter Lee, Teaching History). History should be hard because it's not a 'natural' way of thinking - if students don't find it hard, then it's not focused enough on historical thinking. Dallimore zooms in on this and highlights some key elements of subject History. As we spiral into a world of politicised history wars and ongoing discussion, argumentation, and pseudohistoricising of conspiracies, Dallimore points out our responsibility as teachers to set students up to be able to navigate this violently contested space with appropriately disciplined and critical historical thinking. So yes, this involves providing some degree of context when students look at sources.

Dallimore boils down our role as History teachers as essentially being about the following:

• Historical Confidence and Agility
• Build students' substantive knowledge - provide meaningful data required to make sense of an issue (EG. 17 dictatorships in Europe by 1939 - this fact is meaningful because it raises important questions, EG. Why did this happen at this point in time?).
• Disciplinary knowledge - facilitate an understanding of key disciplinary concepts (EG. Causation, significance)
• Procedural knowledge - teaching the skills needed to 'do' history (EG. Communication in essay form, undertake historical research). 
  

Sources fit in all of the above strands of History teaching- we need sources to build our substantive knowledge but also to help us answer questions. Sources work in a variety of ways within a subject History context:

• Stimulus - to start a discussion
  
• Illustration - to provide an example of something
• Investigative - in an analytical sense, testing a source'sreliability and how/why they've been created.
  
• Construction - using evidence to describe, argue, etc.
• Extension - to research and add layers to what's being discussed.

To keep the balance, each of the above should come into our source analysis. To get to a point where we are taking this robust approach to sources, Dallimore highlighted the importance of choosing your moments - deep source work doesn't have to happen all the time; we have a syllabus with a range of elements that need to be taught but you have a year to teach them so there's no need to focus on all of them all of the time. One topic might focus on chronology and key terms/concepts, another might bring in contestability and analysis and use of sources. The next topic might then shift to significance and communication, with continuing analysis/use of sources. The final topic for the year could then look at perspective/empathy alongside continuing communication and significance. Other skills that might come into play in the following year are change and continuity and causation. Or perhaps they would work better in the first year and you could swap some of the skills around - it's a flexible approach.

The subtext here is that there should be room to interpret the syllabus in accordance with our professional judgement - and we're lucky in the sense that our current syllabus allows for this.

Source analysis in the context of a classroom can be approached in regard to three strands of pedagogy:

• Asking questions
• Finding and analysing meaningful data
• Communicating, sharing and challenging stories and arguments. 

Each of these elements are worked through in three stages - for example, establishing what asking questions looks like, guiding student negotiation in asking questions, and then guiding student creation of their own questions.

As usual with all of the Dallimore sessions I've watched, this was a thought-provoking seminar that helped me to rethink how I do things in the classroom. Great professional learning does this... it lets you watch a subject-expert who speaks the shared language of your subject area. In the course of this discussion, we learn new concepts within this shared language, and we re-energise ourselves as subject-area experts for our students. If I want to get better as a History teacher then I'll watch experienced and passionate History teachers talking about History. That's what this day was... I'm not a Beginner History Teacher; I was in attendance as a presenter in another session, but I'm thankful that I got to tag along and watch this session. Sessions like this aren't just for beginners. 

Tiananmen Square: Ideology and Evaluation

Picking apart the myriad reasons for what happened at Tiananmen Square in 1989 can be quite a big ask, especially in light of the conflicting information in the historical record. At the time of writing it has now been nearly 30 years since the incident occurred, however, the establishment of a national history in keeping with China's ongoing political ideology means that some degree of historiographical analysis will be required from students looking to get an overall picture of this multidimensional event. 

In other words: the official and the unofficial histories of the Tiananmen Square incident are quite different from one another. 

Before engaging with the opinions of a wide range of historians, students should examine the various causes of the event itself. 

This can be looked at in three main ways:

1. The reasons for Deng Xiaoping's opposition to the protests.
2. The reasons for the protestors' opposition to Deng Xiaoping.
3. The reasons for why the protests could ultimately be interpreted as a failure.  

Here's a sheet with 14 causes that can be sorted into the three above categories. Students can colour-code, cut-and-paste, or copy into a table. Click the link below to download.

Resource: Clash of Ideologies

Following this, students can then begin looking at a variety of evaluations regarding the incident, and consider how each historian has grappled with the above three categories of reasoning. These have been gleamed from various books about 20th Century Chinese history, all of which I would recommend. They are as follows:

Alexander V. Pantsov, author of Deng Xiaoping, 2016

Despite numerous pleas to return home, the rebellious youths did not want to abandon their protests, so the leaders of the nation had to choose between employing force and making concessions. And they made their choice, turning the streets leading to Tiananmen red with blood.

Deng Xiaoping retained his firm conviction about the necessity for dictatorship in the form of the unchallengable rule of the Chinese Communist Party. When confronted by a vision of democracy, he could only see the spectre of chaos. He dug in his heels and would go no further.

Many in the Party saw the market forces of economic reforms to blame, that the modernisation of the economy had opened China up to the 'rotten West' and that this was how bourgeois liberalisation contaminated the minds of the youth. The CCP, now with a new upcoming leader in Jiang, now condemned Deng's planned reforms of the future.

Immanuel C. Y. Hsu, author of China Without Mao, 1990

Elders who enjoyed privileges in the Party wanted to hold onto these privileges at all costs, and felt the need to defend the socialist order that had made their elitism possible. Killing protestors was not a concern as they were 'anti-party counterrevolutionaries' who deserved to be eliminated. Loss of tourism and credit was of small concern compared to the survival of the Communist leadership. Deng declared that he did not fear foreign opinion for this reason.

Accurate figures of the massacre are impossible - Western sources estimated 3000 dead and 10 000 wounded. One report from the New York Times said 400-800. A Chinese government spokesman told an NBC anchorman that there were no casualties - certainly no bloodbath. The Chinese government later admitted to 23 students dying accidentally, and that 150 brave soldiers had died, with a further 5000 wounded.

 Frank Dikotter, author of The Cultural Revolution, 2016

The leaders lived in fear of their own people, constantly having to suppress their political aspirations. Deng personally ordered a military crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing, as tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square. The massacre was a display of brutal force and steely resolve, designed to send a signal that still pulsates to this day: do not query the monopoly of the one-party state.

Ezra F. Vogel, author of Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, 2011

It's estimated that 100 000 protestors were in Tiananmen Square when the army moved in around midnight. Only several thousand were left waiting at 2 AM when the army reached the square. It's estimated that 300-2600 demonstrators were killed. Figures from Beijing hospitals show at least 478 dead and 920 wounded. Nearly 600 vehicles, including PLA trucks and armoured carriers, were damaged.

Maurice Meisner, author of Mao's China and After, 1999

Deng Xiaoping congratulated the police and the army who had crushed the 'counterrevolutionary rebellion'. And he offered condolences to the families of government soldiers who had died. He labelled the civilians as 'the dregs of society'. The government later released a figure of 300 civilian deaths which was mocked by eyewitnesses. It is estimated that 2000-7000 civilian deaths occurred. A nationwide wave of arrests occurred after the event, resulting in the incarceration of at least 1000, and the executions of 100s.

Resource: Assessment of the Tiananmen Square incident by Historians

Stage 5: The Rise of China



The artwork of Maoist China is particularly ripe for historical analysis.
Students can use visual literacy skills from English to identify the purpose of the text.

Isn't History an amazing subject? I'm so glad you agree. Below you'll find a complete unit on The Rise of China for Stage 5 History, which includes a rationale, outline, scope and sequence, assessment task, and associated resources/lessons. The idea behind this half-term unit is to build literacy skills in tandem with source analysis, with an emphasis on helping those students who dislike or have trouble with reading.


The Rise of China - full unit here.


Most of the texts in the above unit are included only in small part, or in the case of Mao's Little Red Book, aren't really covered by copyright. I recommend you try to seek out each of these texts anyway, some are out of print but can be gotten from places like Bookdepository.com or abebooks.com. A class set of Little White Duck in particular would be invaluable.


For more information on the lessons in the above unit, feel free to peruse the following pages:


Conception
Outline
Lesson Planning
Lesson 1
Lesson 2
Lesson 3
Lesson 4
Lesson 5
Lesson 6
Lesson 7


Have a nice day!

That Pesky Russian Vocabulary!

One thing I've found with teaching Russian History is that some students have trouble accessing the content because the terms are so unfamiliar with them. About a year and a half ago, one of my Year 12s disparagingly exclaimed, "I can't get my head around all these bolsheviks and nosheviks and yesheviks!" 

I was a little sad about it, but in hindsight it shouldn't have surprised me. A lot of the words that come into play during the Russia and the Soviet Union HSC National Study aren't even in English, and then there's also the tricky English terms too, all the -isms; nationalism, communism, marxism, stalinism, totalitarianism... these are new terms for the vast majority of students. 

Like most teachers of Modern History, I try to enforce and reinforce all these terms by teaming up the National Study with a Russian Personality Study (Trotsky), and setting it up in Preliminary with 'The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty'. I therefore hope that most students can at least remember a smattering of the tricky new words by the time they get to the end of all their Russification. 

But, just in case they haven't, I decided to create a quick vocabulary activity that will help my current class as they grapple with their 'isms and 'sheviks. The premise is fairly straightforward: 

• Students are given a wordbank of Russian terms and concepts.
• Underneath the wordbank is a table with a list of some key terms.
• Students have to match up the wordbank terms with the key terms in the table. All of the wordbank terms are synonyms or near-synonyms for the key terms in the table.

Activity found here. 

I put this together because, whilst programming this unit last term, I found myself swept under the sheer weight of information I had to impart onto the students. Which terms do I include? Do I stick to socialism or communism? What about Marxism? Aren't they all basically the same thing? Maybe, maybe not. Like it or not, I wasn't going to be able to prevent the students being exposed to all of these terms in their study of Russia so it was useless for me to try and moderate or censor the new glossary they would be learning.

A nice little bit of extension is to then prompt some of the higher ability students to determine which two groups of terms represent the 'Left' and 'Right' wings of the political spectrum. 

Hopefully this activity helps them connect a few ideas together. Heck, if it helps one student remember one new word, then it's definitely worth doing. 

All Power to the Soviet

"The French Revolution had guillotined its enemies; the proletarian revolution would compel them to work for it" - E. H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution Volume 2, 1952

When I started teaching the HSC National Study 'Russia and the Soviet Union 1917-1941' (otherwise known by the equally uninteresting name of 'Option G') there was one thing that really bothered me. I understood that Lenin and Trotsky had wrestled power from the Provisional Government to create the world's first communist state, and I understood how they had achieved this by appealing to the masses and using the Kornilov Affair to their advantage. But what I didn't understand was how they physically changed Russia from a burgeoning capitalist Euro-state into something completely new and different. 

How was it done? Russia is a big place, how exactly do you suddenly convert all those factories and businesses into socialist organs of the state? Russia had just been through the crippling autocratic reign of the Tsar, two revolutions, and a horrendous war with Germany - Lenin was not exactly flush with the resources or manpower to achieve his communist dream. So how on Earth did he actually make it happen?

I picked up the above book by Carr in a secondhand bookstore. It's brown and smells like decay in that way that all old, unloved books smell, but it's also by E. H. Carr, who factors quite significantly into the History Extension course (which I also teach) so I figured I could kill two birds with one stone by reading it. It's a fairly dry text in every sense of the word but the content also went a long way in explaining how the Russian economy worked, and how it bent to the will to historical forces and people. 

Just what I was after!

Carr grapples with the problem of which came first (the big events of Russian history or the economic conditions?) and manages to illuminate this conundrum as much as possible by refusing to pick an order of cause and effect. Instead he alternates back and forth between the two, arguing that the economy both informed the big events and was also shaped by them. He believes that they're inextricably tied together. 

As I read Carr's treatise on this subject I quickly became conscious of the fact that there would be very little in this book that I could explicitly use with my Year 12 Modern History class. It's just too complex, and the last thing I want to do is bore or confuse them.

However, I have no qualms at all about boring or confusing YOU, the internet reader and possible fellow teacher. So here's a bit of context about Marxism before I talk about Russia, c. 1917:

Karl Marx = not Santa Claus

A Crash Course in Marxism

• Karl Marx and his good ol' buddy Engels believed that society would always organise itself in a way that would make the best use of resources. There's a belief out there that communism is something that exists as an alternative to capitalism, but that isn't strictly what Marx was suggesting when he formulated his theory. Marx believed that communism was the future in the most literal sense. He saw capitalism as a necessary step towards communism; and capitalism was merely the stage of a society's development that took place after feudalism.

• Here's a better way of thinking about it. First, a society organises itself into a feudal state so that the land-owning aristocracy can make the best possible use of a country's resources. Then, a middle class emerges - the bourgeoisie - and their amassing of capital wealth (as opposed to land wealth) gives them the means to take power from the aristocracy. This changes the society from a feudal one into a capitalist one. The bourgeoisie then better organise resources by using their extensive capital wealth to motivate the lower class - the proletariat - in going to work for them. Eventually the proletariat will realise that the real power resides with them, and the resources of the society can be spread more equitably by the ousting of the bourgeoisie class. This changes the society from a capitalist one into a socialist one. The next, and final stage, is the removal of the instruments of government - a conversion from a working class-run capitalist society into a communist society. A society that essentially runs itself through the equitable allocation of its resources.

• Or; Feudalism (aristocracy, bourgeoisie, proletariat) becomes > Capitalism (bourgeoisie, proletariat) becomes > Communism (proletariat). 

•  Marx had several rules that would help the proletariat in manifesting their power - common sense things like the abolition of child labour, free education for everyone, equal obligation to work, abolition of inheritance... then there were the harder to sell ideas of abolition of private property, state ownership of factories, and state-controlled media/communication channels.

• Once the theoretical Marxist society had re-organised itself accordingly, the perfectly functioning economy that would result from all this equitable re-distribution of wealth would render the concept of a 'state' useless. No more government. No more nations. No more borders. So that's what John Lennon was on about!

I placed this image in the centre, but maybe it should've been placed to the left.

The 1917 Revolution

Back to Russia 1917; the new Russian middle class had teamed up with the proletariat to depose their 19th century tyrant, the oddly mild-mannered but wholly ineffectual Nicholas Romanov II. This in itself wasn't that unusual. A rather 'soft' industrial revolution had moved the British middle class into co-power with their aristocracy in the 1850s, and the French had formed a democratic republic before that with more than a few dropped blades. However, what was different with Russia was that the working class and peasantry had Marxist-educated representatives who were eager to skip the capitalist stage as quickly as possible now that their Tsar had been de-throned.

Lenin spake, "We want the peasantry to go further than the bourgeoisie and seize the land from the land-owners".

What's worth noting is that there were essentially two revolutions happening in Russia at the same time. The peasants had revolted against the land-owning aristocracy, whilst the workers (and socialists) were rallying against a bourgeoisie/capitalist paradigm. The two had become bedfellows in the face of the Tsar's corrupt autocracy, but their views weren't always compatible.

In relation to this, a curious situation had arisen in post-Tsarist Russia. Two governments were in operation. The official one was the Provisional Government - a democratic and largely bourgeoisie organ that had developed from the Duma, the Tsar's previous and thoroughly unpopular attempts at reasonable governance. The other government was the Petrograd Soviet, which was a loose conglomeration of socialist groups and workers' unions. An uneasy alliance had developed between the two out of necessity but neither was in any fit state to run the country on their own. In fact, even whilst working together they weren't doing that great a job of it.

Then Lenin arrived on the scene, fresh from exile and political imprisonment, and Trotsky came back in from the wilderness to put aside his problems with the factionalism that had previously been occurring within the Russian Socialist party. Together they bloodlessly removed the Provisional Government (a fascinating story for another day) and set up a Bolshevik Government in its place.

One of the many problems of the Provisional Government was that they had no ideological motivation to re-organise Russia's resources in order to feed the starving Russian people. The factories in the Russian cities were still too closely tied to the bourgeoisie, so the Provisional Government was not willing to shake things up too much by forcibly moving resources away from the 'haves' to the 'have nots'. Instead, Kerensky's government suggested that the peasants come to a 'voluntary agreement with their landlords' in regards to food and land.

A voluntary agreement?! "Can we please have some food for free?" When has that ever worked?

The Bolsheviks were the only group to give their blessing to the peasants in regards to seizing land for themselves. Lenin put out word that all private property in land was to be abolished and placed at the disposal of the peasants (the only group he considered off-limits were the Cossacks, he said they could keep their land - a  shrewd political move that kept their muscle on his side). A further caveat was that every man was only entitled to as much land as he could work, and as much as could feed his family.

Articles 3 of Lenin's new laws; "The right to use the land belongs to him who cultivates it with his own labour".

Alongside this was a call for the workers to take control of the factories, a necessity that would draw resources and money into the control of the state.

Making Things Happen

But how did he enforce this? Much has been said of Lenin having very little power to actually make this happen... all he could do is suggest it and give the new Bolshevik Government's blessing, and hope that the peasants and workers would do the rest.

Well, one thing that Carr's book sheds light on is the role of the trade unions. They assisted in keeping order during this messy and chaotic transition process. The Soviets were more powerful than the trade unions because they had soldiers, but an alliance was still needed in order to organise the factories and the workers As you could imagine there were a lot of problems during this stage, and here are some examples:

• A series of button factories were sabotaged by the former manager who had been kicked out by the workers (he was sent to a labour camp for his troubles). 
• Some workers, once they had control of their factories, sold off all the equipment and stock for their own financial gain (I guess it had yet to be impressed upon them that capitalism in Russia was soon to be over).
• Some workers kicked out their managers and then later had to beg them to come back in order to help run the factories (this is communism in action - Marx postulated that the bourgeoisie and proletariat would eventually merge into one larger proletariat class under the new socialist model of society). 

Some communists (both at the time and in hindsight) argued that this chaos was necessary, that destroying the economy was actually part of the communist process. The workers were (unknowingly) 'smashing the economic machine' and therefore allowing for the state to be rebuilt as a socialist utopia.

Of course, as you and I know, there would never be any such utopia for Russia. Lenin's early death, Trotsky's exile from Russia, the rise of Stalin... any number of factors could be blamed, but the point remains that Russia's sheer size, string of historical tragedies, and dearth of social happiness perhaps made it impossible for such a communist paradise to ever be achieved.

Lenin felt that a state-run form of capitalism would easily supersede the form of capitalism that had arisen towards the end of the Tsar's reign. This would provide a transition phase before moving towards collectivisation; the process in which huge communal farms would become the building block for a socialist Russia.

This more 'fair dinkum' version of communism never happened during Lenin's lifetime, but Stalin would eventually have his own crack at collectivisation after disposing of nearly every other revolutionary in the 1920s communist government.

It could therefore be argued that communist Russia never really materialised under Lenin. Many have pointed to the New Economic Policy that emerged in the early 1920s as a step backwards towards capitalism, but Lenin knew he had to generate some wealth in order to nurse Russia back to health after all the damage wreaked by the Tsar, World War I, the 1917 Revolution, and the Russian Civil War. This would also buy him more time to continue the extensive reforms that were rapidly transforming the country's economy.

A New Vision for Russia

The shift from a feudal state through a capitalist one into a communist nation in just the space of a few years is incredible and astounding, especially in a country as huge as Russia. So, here is how Carr says that Lenin managed to achieve this:

1. Nationalisation of all of Russia's banks into one state-run bank. The banks responded to this by refusing to open, or to only open their doors for a few hours a day, and to give no credit. The Bolsheviks threatened imprisonment and sent soldiers to the banks, but the banks called their bluff and the boycott continued. Eventually, Lenin confiscated all their gold and bullion. After the Civil War then came and went, the banks were in so much disarray that it was quite easy for a centralised money-lending institution to be installed. 
2. Nationalisation of trade syndicates. Lenin took control of the country's big resources - sugar, iron, coal, oil - things like that. The syndicates were evidently less bourgeois than the banks as they rolled over a lot more easily.
3. Establishment of state monopolies in place of capitalist ones. This was easy once Lenin had control of the banks and all their cash.
4. Forced unification of smaller enterprises. A step towards collectivisation that sounded easier to achieve than the great melding of the farms. I'm not sure if this one was all that successful either but perhaps there was a trickle-down effect from Lenin's seizure of the trade syndicates.
5. Abolition of commercial secrecy. A nice thought.
6. Nationalisation of the factories. Fun fact: when Lenin and his Soviets sent out representatives to nationalise industry in rural areas like Turkestan, they found that it had already been done by the workers and peasants. Approximately half of all Russia nationalised on its own without direct intervention. How's that for the power of an idea?
7. Regulation of consumption. This was achieved through rationing. Once the Civil War started this was facilitated by special rural soviets of 25 peasants each, who would requisition grain from farms on behalf of the state. Prior to this, the Bolshevik government attempted to scapegoat 'bagmen' - semi-mythical capitalist pigs who exploited the countryside by buying up food and reselling it at an exorbitant price - and issued a decree that any such criminals would be shot. There is limited evidence that such men ever existed during the famine. 

The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk had seen a lot of Russia's more lucrative industry ceded to Germany. This prompted a lot of German interest in Russia's commercial branches, and, after large slabs of the Ukraine had been absorbed by Germany, the Kaiser's businessmen began buying up more Russian factories on a large scale. There was a lot of worry in Russia that Germany's influence would make possible an economic invasion far more devastating than the war had been, so this prompted much quicker nationalisation of industry then would normally have been possible. It also didn't help that Russia was now also being blockaded by the Allies for making peace with Germany, so (as a result) by 1918 nearly all industries had been declared property of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic - with very little resistance.

The next step in Lenin's state-run economy was for equal distribution of wages. In Lenin's words, "he that does not work, neither shall he eat". Under socialist policy this meant equal wages to all. The salary of commissars was limited, so in this system even Lenin earned a wage that was just comparable to a skilled factory worker. It soon became apparent, however, that this idea was very hard to put into practice as a fixed rate of productivity was needed in order to guarantee everybody the same wage. And how do you regulate an industry that was, in the words of some, being 'smashed' for the benefit of tearing down the old order?

So, as you can see, the Bolshevik Government did manage to enact some kind of widespread economic change in the years that immediately followed the 1917 Revolution. Different elements were either exacerbated or lubricated by the brutal chaos of the Civil War that ravaged Russia between 1918 and 1921, and nearly all of it had been radically changed by the time of Lenin's death in 1924. 

Where things went from here were entirely up to one seemingly innocuous Georgian pen-pusher, Josef Stalin...

The Rise of China: Lesson 7

Well, here we are, at the end of a metaphorical silk road with the final lesson in my unit on 20th century China. At the beginning of the unit we looked at China circa 1900 in order to get a baseline before looking at how Mao impacted on the country between the 1950s and 1976. Over the last few lessons the students had a selected tour of the Cultural Revolution to get an idea of how Chinese society changed under the Chairman's influence, so now it makes sense to look at what came afterwards and how China reacted to Mao's passing. This final lesson looks at his successor, Deng Xiaoping, and how he assessed Mao's time and instigated various reforms.

The focus question here is Who is Deng Xiaoping and What Did He Do for China?

Step 1

Students are given a prediction activity on a slip of paper (Resource 7-1) that features a list of modal statements suggesting possible evaluations of China. On this paper they are asked to tick the things that they agree with. It should help them focus on the lesson at hand; they're required to think about what they're going to read and what they've already read. And once the students have read the text (featured in the next step) they then go back and tick which of the statements the author of the text agreed with.

Step 2

Students read Resource 7-2, an information sheet about Deng Xiaoping, which asks them to unpack (or decode) some of the trickier noun groups. It's another kind of vocabulary / comprehension activity that will help students achieve confidence when reading. It also gets them to think about what they're reading a little more - building up their concept of connotation and how noun groups can construct specific meanings that supersede the meanings of the individual words. 

Afterwards, there's some more traditional questions about source reliability that should hopefully be a bit easier for the students now that they've worked through the grammar of the text in a bit of detail. 

Step 3

If there's time left over at the end, ask the students to identify text chains in the text. They should already be able to do this from the earlier lesson on text chains, but it could also be done as a whole class activity with teacher modelling of examples on the board. This is always a useful activity because it explicitly shows students how to create a 'whole text' level of meaning rather than just word or sentence-level meaning.

Links to resources:
Resource 7-1: Prediction
Resource 7-2: Deng Xiaoping

And that brings us to the end of the unit. 

You'll note the absence of an assessment task from this program. I have one, it's a source analysis examination with an extended question on Mao's impact, but I'm not going to put it up on the blog because... well, that's probably just asking for trouble. Imagine if students found this blog and downloaded the assessment task before they had to sit it? I mean, it would show initiative and great organisational skills, but those aren't the things I want to assess.

The Rise of China: Lesson 6

This is the second last lesson in The Rise of China sequence and, as such, it starts off with an overview of some key points that can assist students for the upcoming assessment task. The rest of the lesson focuses A) Deepening student knowledge of the points covered in the overview, and B) Building up monitoring and decoding skills for use in source analysis. 

Anyway, here's the lesson itself...

Step 1

Project Resource 6-1 onto the white board and have students copy the mind map into their books so that they have some background knowledge on Chinese society (1958-1976) that they can use as study notes. 

Step 2

Following on from Step 1, students are to work on deepening their knowledge of Chinese society further by selecting a text from a wide reading set (Resources 6-3 and 6-4). I know two texts isn't really that 'wide', but in the class room I also include two other extracts gleamed from the excellent comic Little White Duck. I don't want to flagrantly break copyright law by scanning it and putting it up for download so I'll instead recommend that you purchase this comic for yourself as a class set.

Step 3

Students use Resource 6-2, a schema sheet that scaffolds deconstruction of sources, to analyse their selected text. This sheet asks a series of questions that assist the student in identifying tricky vocabulary and making sense of it, and then directs the student to drill down into the content of the source by categorising the words and evaluating their usage. 

This activity pulls in various elements from throughout the unit in order to combine the array of previously-taught skills into a literacy-based approach to source analysis. The hope would be that (as this is the penultimate lesson) students would complete this unit with a new understanding of how to decode sources and comprehend increasingly difficult text.

Links to resources
Resource 6-1: Chinese Society
Resource 6-2: Using Sources
Resource 6-3: Text #1 'Mao the Unknown Story'
Resource 6-4: Text #2 'Prisoner of Mao'

The Rise of China: Lesson 5

As this unit focuses on China's modernisation during the 20th Century, it makes sense for the Cultural Revolution to be viewed as the linchpin of this era. It therefore felt worthwhile to spend another lesson on this time period, one that was partially reliant on the previous lesson's content.

The main purpose of this lesson was that I wanted to try my hand at a 'floorstorm' activity, something that I picked up from Joanne Rossbridge and the Grammar and Teaching Course she conducts with Kathy Rushton. At first glance, a floorstorm is a slightly complicated-looking series of steps that students undertake with an array of resources. On the plus side though, it should roughly take an entire 1 hour lesson, and works as a scaffold to assist students in constructing their own paragraphs about a subject they are currently immersed in.

Step 1

Verbally prime the students for the lesson by asking them what they can tell you about the Cultural Revolution from the previous lesson. Ask them how they know this. This could be done as a discussion or a mind map.

Step 2

Use Resource 5-1 (or copies of the pictures at the bottom of this blog) to create several 7-picture photo sets. Students are to work in groups of 3-5 with a set of photos for each group, and come up with a list of words that could be associated with the pictures. Give each group some post-it notes to write these words on.

Step 3

Groups classify words into a table using Resource 5-2. They choose/create the categories they want to use to classify the words. It's important that the students come up with these categories themselves as taxonomy-building is an important literacy skill that links with student grammar development. It forces the students to think about the purpose of the words they've just come up with - whether they separate them by function (verbs, nouns, adjectives), or by content (people, places, events) or some other way of their own making.    

Step 4

Reveal the title of the photo set to the students as 'Public Struggle Sessions'. Using this clue, students are to then tick the words that they think will be in an unseen text about these photos. This incorporation of a prediction activity fits in with the Super 6 Comprehension Strategies and also directs the students in further building a lexicon to work with in regards to the subject of 20th Century China.

Make a list on the board from the class' suggestions (this may help students who have been struggling up until this point - it's important to have these checkpoints where these students can 'opt in' to the lesson so that you avoid a full hour's worth of disengagement)

Step 5

Teacher reads Resource 5-3 to students (they are not given a copy). Students are to listen and highlight/circle the words from their list that show up. After this, read the sheet again and have students make notes using the scaffold found in Resource 5-4.

Step 6 

Hand students Resource 5-5. This is an annotated version of Resource 5-3 that asks a variety of grammar-related questions surrounding the text. Teacher also projects this version onto the board to facilitate discussion and instruction as students work through the sheet.

Step 7

Almost there! Students now use Resource 5-6 to pull the text apart into some pre-set categories. Specifically, students identify clauses / sentence noun groups (the teacher can help here, after all - that's what we do!) and examine them for modality and emotive language. Using this scaffolding they can then draw some conclusions from the source. 

Step 8

And now that your students have done all of this, get them to use any and all of the information to construct their own paragraph with the heading 'Public Struggle Sessions'.

I know it's a lot of steps so you will need to work at a brisk pace, moving around the room from group to group to keep students on task. A big visible timer might be helpful too! The important thing is that the students collect together all these new terms while engaging with a text and are then able to write about it.

Links to resources
Resource 5-1: Photo Set
Resource 5-2: Table
Resource 5-3: Struggle Sessions
Resource 5-4: Note Taking
Resource 5-5: Struggle Sessions Annotated
Resource 5-6: Graphic Organiser

For printing purposes, here are the pictures from the photo sets as .jpgs

 

 

Obviously I don't have copyright for these pictures but they should be okay for educational usage. If anyone thinks otherwise please let know and I'll take them down.

The Rise of China: Lesson 4

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). 

\

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

The Rise of China: Lesson 3

Hello there! Now that the students have been introduced to a few historical terms and gathered some background information about 20th century China it's time for them to start learning about the colossal keystone of modern Chinese history: Mao Tse-Tung. Lesson 3 of this Rise of China unit asks the question 'Who is Chairman Mao?'

I think, predominantly, it's helpful to remember that today's student knows little to nothing about Chairman Mao. You might think that this should go without saying but, heck, I said it because when I was a student (in the 1990s) the spectre of Chairman Mao still hung over pop culture in a big way. I remember the Tiananmen Square Massacre being all over the TV, and I grew up knowing that Mao was one of the 'big guys' in terms of recent history and current world events.

One of the biggest challenges for teachers today is increasing the contextual knowledge held by students. With so many cat videos and songified news stories demanding our attention on Youtube, today's kid isn't as au fait with the 'canon' of world events that were common knowledge to previous Australian generations. Newspapers aren't a thing anymore, and the aspects of history that once permeated our curriculum have become decentered due to the continuing influence of postmodernism. This isn't necessarily a bad thing.

So - whereas we once considered certain Western historical narratives (EG. Britain's colonisation of Australia, the sinking of the Titanic, the assassination of JFK) to be of the highest significance (the aforementioned 'canon' of world events) - our view of history is now a lot more cosmopolitan and egalitarian. This is great in terms of addressing Anglo-Saxon bias, but it's also a challenge because the sheer dearth of information makes it next to impossible for today's generation to know which historical facts are worth remembering.

This means that it's necessary to get the context stuff in before we expect students to start analysing sources and perspectives.

The purpose of this lesson is for students to gather some biographical information on Chairman Mao before reading an appropriate source and unpacking information from it in order to further build their contextual knowledge. It might take two lessons rather than one.

Step 1

Teacher shows students PowerPoint presentation (Resource 3-1) about Chairman Mao while students collect information onto sheets (Resources 3-2, 3-2A, 3-2E). 

These sheets have been differentiated to cater for varied levels of student ability within the classroom. The core/standard group (the majority of the class) are given a range of comprehension questions to read through (3-2) that will facilitate engagement with the text in the PPT. For the lower ability students, a separate version of the sheet (3-2A) has been adjusted to allow for more direct gathering of information - students fill in cloze passage answers and are not required to decode questions before transferring information from the PPT onto the sheet. Meanwhile, higher ability students are given a sheet (3-2E) that asks more open-ended questions that require students to formulate their own opinions - incorporating higher order skills such as assessing the impact of Mao's leadership and independent summarising of information.

Step 2

The second part of the lesson involves students engaging with a wide reading text set (this idea is lifted from the research contained in the Focus on Reading 2 modules). 

The purpose of a wide reading set is to allow students to pick a text to read. Putting the choice of text into the hands of students encourages independent thought and a higher level of engagement, and the range of texts provided here (3-3, 3-4, 3-5) also works as a form of differentiation. Each text is an extract of a larger text about Chairman Mao, and they range in terms of reading difficulty. 

The Focus on Reading 2 modules support the theory that students should be engaging with texts that are 'just right', these being historical sources that are easy enough for the students to read without stopping too frequently (and hence allowing a suitable level of fluency), but also difficult enough to challenge them occasionally in regards to learning new vocabulary.

Step 3

After the students pick and read one of the texts from the wide reading set (the origins of which are cited within the resources), they then use a table (3-7) to sort words into three categories.

These categories are: words that students can understand and use, words that students are familiar with but are not sure they can use, and words that are unfamiliar. This taxonomising of terms is an important part of increasing vocabulary and understanding of context, and through the use of the table students are scaffolded into using this skill on their own. It's never too late for students to learn this!

Take note, if students have not collected enough unfamiliar words from their text then they have chosen a text that is too easy and they should therefore be pushed towards a more difficult text next time.

Step 4

Teacher collects some of the unfamiliar terms that students have identified and puts them up on the board as a glossary. The teacher can then use the teacher notes (Resource 3-8) to define some of these words.

As probably mentioned previously on this blog, students should not copy new word definitions into their books. Whilst it's important for students to be able to work from or learn a glossary,  this kind of old-school 'rote' learning has been proven by research (Focus on Reading 2) to be relatively ineffective for the majority of learners. What is more effective is for students to observe these new words and their definitions on the board (or, preferably, discuss them as a class) and then place the new terms into sentences. In this case, ask the students to pick 5-10 new terms and use them in sentences about Chairman Mao and/or China. By using the terms in a proper context, students are far more likely to learn their purpose and remember them in the future. The key is taking new words and using them appropriately - a student can copy a new word down but they also need to be able to use it. That's the real bit.

Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that I haven't included Resource 3-6. This was an extra text for use in the wide reading set, an extract from the excellent graphic novel Little White Duck. I haven't included it here for two reasons - the first is that I haven't got an electronic version of it, and the second is that I don't want to infringe on copyright too overtly. The other texts I've included are extracts that are out of print and small enough, or sourced from elsewhere on the internet.

Links to resources:
Resource 3-1: Who is Chairman Mao PPT
Resource 3-2: Who is Chairman Mao sheet
Resource 3-2A: Who is Chairman Mao adjusted sheet
Resource 3-2E: Who is Chairman Mao extension sheet
Resource 3-3: Mao Tse-Tung and I Were Beggars text
Resource 3-4: Mao and the Chinese Revolution text
Resource 3-5: Chairman Mao the Deadly Dictator text
Resource 3-7: Mao Texts Vocabulary
Resource 3-8: Vocabulary Teacher Notes 

The Rise of China: Lesson 2

Lesson 2 of this Rise of China unit is designed to get students to start engaging with source work within the context of the historical period. As with the previous lesson there is still an emphasis on literacy and vocabulary usage, and this therefore means that I've taken a 'bottom-up' approach to teaching the requisite Stage 5 source skills - the idea being that students learn to look at sources from a literacy-based standpoint before we even start thinking about higher order History skills like reliability and usefulness.

Step 1

Project Resource 2-1 onto the board. This document contains three photographs of Shanghai - from 1900, 1950, and 2014. The majority of students in the class (your core or standard group in terms of ability) are to approach these images by writing a paragraph that describes the differences between the three time periods.

Meanwhile, lower ability students (the adjusted group) are given Resource 2-1A, a scaffold that helps them differentiate and table-ise their thoughts before assembling a few sentences in a more formal paragraph. Higher ability students (the extension group) can be given Resource 2-1E, a slip of paper with a higher order question that prompts them to argue from a firm and explicit position.

Step 2

Following on from the previous lesson (especially if they didn't get up to the last step of said lesson), the students are to conduct their own lexical density test on the paragraph that they've just written. The teacher should collect student lexical density percentages as a diagnostic score to assist with further identifying (or confirming) streams of ability within the class, and also as a tool for measuring writing ability for purposes of later comparison. 

If you feel, however, like your students are not conducive to the lexical density testing (or you've already had the chance to collect this information) then you can just skip forward to Step 3. It won't be a big deal.

Step 3

Building a bit further on the idea of analysing visual sources, the students are now given Resource 2-2, a written text about early 20th century cultural relations between China and the West that has two accompanying cartoons (one from a Chinese perspective and one from a Western perspective). Students are to read this text whilst collecting information in a 'Making Sense of Visual Representations' table (Resource 2-3, adapted from the Focus on Reading 2 modules).

Students can either pick one cartoon to examine or do a separate sheet for each one. The main goal here is to build an understanding of the relationship between text and image, specifically the way in which both work together to enhance meaning. This is typically a literacy/English-based skill but in History it becomes really useful because it helps to build context - allowing students to decode unfamiliar visual texts and start accessing meaning in a more fluent way that will allow for higher order analysis. 

As much as students find historical cartoons and propaganda quite visually striking, I've found that they still often lack the context to really appreciate what's being said. A lot of Year 11 Modern History students are quite unwilling to draw connections between their own experiences and the commentary contained in early 20th century satirical cartoons, so I think it's important that they learn at this Year 10 level to independently create contextual knowledge in the way demonstrated by Resource 2-3. It'll build confidence and make these sorts of texts a bit less intimidating for them.

Some teacher notes on Step 3 are also included in Resource 2-4.

Links to each of the resources can be found here: 
Resource 2-1: Comparison of Time Periods
Resource 2-1A: Comparison of Time Periods
Resource 2-1E: Comparison of Time Periods
Resource 2-2: Comparing Perspectives
Resource 2-3: Making Sense of Visual Representations
Resource 2-4: Teacher Notes for Visual Representations

Disclaimer: The photography used here is strictly for educational use. If these pictures are yours and you would like credit (or for me to take them down) please just let me know. 

The Rise of China: Lesson 1

For me, getting stuck into the first lesson is always the hardest part of writing a History unit. The reason for this is one of those questions that historians have argued over for a considerable amount of time: where do historical events start?

So - how far back should I go in giving students background for the era of Chinese history that we'll be examining? The sequence of cause and effect in history can run on and on and on if you look hard enough. And that's if you're a believer in cause and effect - some historians look at history and just see it as a series of random events, or thing that correlate with (rather than cause) each other.

For the sake of student and teacher sanity, I decided to cut my background off around the year 1900, and I took the approach of implying causation between certain events rather then directly stating such things. It's not really the teacher's place to get all hardline about which events caused which, that's something that should be left open for Year 10 students to deduce - especially since there are no real right or wrong answers about cause and effect. Having said that, relevant information still needs to be presented so students can draw some conclusions with relative ease.  

Before I go on with justifying my choices, I'll start with the lesson plan,

Lesson 1: Background to Modern China

1. Students read passage on screen (Resource 1-1) and answer questions in their books.

2. Explain lexical density to students using text on screen, hand students their own version of the text (Resource 1-2). Lexical density refers to the amount of 'content' words in a text - these are any verbs, nouns, adverbs or adjectives. Work with students to identify all of these words in the paragraph. Students then divide these words by the total amount of words to determine a percentage. This is the lexical density of the text. A well-written text should be between 55% and 70%. If it's too high then it's overwritten, and if it's too low then it's too much like conversation/spoken language.

3. Students work on linking sections of the text together - IE. Different words that refer to the same thing. See teacher notes (Resource 1-3)

4. Students write sentences about China that use the following terms from the text:

• Dominate/dominated
• Shanghai
• Dynasty
• Modernise/modernisation
• Longyu

5. If time, students/teacher use lexical density test to examine student writing after sentences have been composed.

I've left the last step optional for time reasons. Without seeing the lesson in a live classroom it's hard to gauge how it will all play out. But that's one of the magical things about teaching, right? Here's a more detailed break down of each step with some accompanying theory...

Step 1

Resource 1-1 is a short paragraph that has been designed to give students an overview of CHina between 1900 and the modern day. It's a difficult thing to squeeze that much history into such a small word count but it's important that this text is kept relatively short so that we have time to do all the teacherly things with it, and so that students don't become disengaged while reading. It's been written as something that will also fit nicely onto the whiteboard as a projection. Anyway, here's the text:

The Beginning of Modern China (1900-1912)

In 1900, China's glory days were behind her. China was a nation in a decline. In 1900, China was heavily controlled by foreign nations such as England, Germany and France, who tended to dominate the ports such as Shanghai. China was ruled by the royal Qing dynasty, who were from Manchuria (now known as Korea). After losing a series of small wars to Britain and France, China had to hand over the strategically important port of Hong Kong to Britain. Many in China blamed the Qing family for their humiliation at the hands of European powers. The Chinese Empress Dowager refused to modernise China, leading to many Chinese states rebelling and 'breaking away' from her rule. In 1912, after much negotiations, Longyu gave up her power so that Chinese politicians could form their own government to save China. This brought an end to 2000 years of Imperial China. 

I've followed this with four relatively straightforward comprehension questions to get the students talking around the text and writing straight away about the new topic. These questions are:

1. Who controlled China during this time?
2. Why do you think this is?
3. What does the word 'modern' mean?
4. Why were the Qing Dynasty forced to step down from their throne?

Despite their simplicity, the purpose of these questions are manifold. The first and second questions are designed to get the students thinking about China's relationship with other countries - something that underpins Chinese justification for their foreign policy during much of the 20th and 21st centuries. The third question starts the students thinking about their vocabulary (something that forms a large part of this unit) and the fourth question brings the students to their starting point - the disruption and collapse of China's traditional past. Each question gets the student to engage with the text on a surface level whilst also pushing them (hopefully) to a level of comprehension that goes beyond word-level recognition. When students are able to push past getting bogged down on understanding singular words they can then move to whole-sentence and, better yet, whole-text levels of comprehension. Each of these questions asks for engagement at one or more of these different levels.

Step 2

Resource 1-2 is much the same as Resource 1-1, only spaced-out to allow for the lexical density test and the cohesion analysis that comes in Step 3 of the lesson. Step 1 of the lesson focuses on a document projected onto a screen/whiteboard rather than a student copy of the text because I don't want the kids to get hung up on the new term 'lexical density' before they even read the source and engage with the actual content. 

Step 2 allows the students to have a sheet (Resource 2-1) so that they can now move beyond the content to look at how the text has been constructed. It's easy to think of text construction as an English domain but by examining grammar in History students can build up their own contextual knowledge and drill down into the intentions of the source's writer - things that are very pertinent when it comes to source analysis. I find the idea of using grammar to analyse sources quite exciting because it's a very grounded way for students to engage with source work, and any History teacher knows how unenthused students can get when faced with the higher order skills that accompany source analysis!

After students have been introduced to both the concept of lexical density and how this reveals the difference between written vs. spoke-like text, well, then it's time for the class to get stuck into looking at how the text works at a grammatical level. 

Step 3

Resource 1-3 provides some notes for teachers to use in assisting students to find text chains in the source. A 'text chain' is simply a series of arrows/lines drawn between highlighted words in a text. These chains show words that refer to the same idea, and demonstrate how extended vocabulary can be beneficial to making a text more cohesive. This explicit engagement with the grammar also allows students to get a more in-depth contextual understanding of the text - for example, realising that 'Dynasty' and 'royal family' refer to the same thing, or that the Chinese Empress Dowager's name is Longyu. 

Once students have begun acknowledging the lexical density of the source and decoding some of these previously unfamiliar words it's then necessary that we get them to actually use at least a few of these new terms in context, hence Step 4 of the lesson plan. The decoding that accompanies the process of building text chains is also a useful skill for students to learn as it helps them build fluency when reading. 

Step 4

The Focus on Reading research shows that simply defining new terms and getting students to write these definitions down is a fairly ineffective way of broadening vocabulary and has very little impact on student learning. What's much more meaningful is getting students to talk about the meanings of these new terms and then wrestle with the words directly by placing them into new sentences. Using the terms is what makes those synapses fire! If we're ever to get students to write well then we need them to build up their toolkit of lexical knowledge... that means increasing their vocabulary by getting them to actually use new words.

Step 5

Then, if the teacher gets through all of this and has some time left over in the lesson, students can examine the lexical density of their new sentences from Step 4. This information won't really be for them by the teacher can collect it as a form of diagnostic pre-testing and compare it to student samples taken from the assessment task at the end of the unit.

Links to each of the resources can be found here:
Resource 1-1: The Beginning of Modern China
Resource 1-2: Student Copy
Resource 1-3: Teacher Notes