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'

Beautiful Blueback Bunting!

Buntmania!

For the last couple of years I've been wanting to get some bunting happening in my class room. Secondary to this was finding something to feature on said bunting, and I guess the two finally clicked together this year whilst I was teaching Tim Winton's Blueback to my Year 7 class. 

Last year I did an activity with a Year 7 class where each student created a single card that visually represented one of Blueback's chapters. Prior to this, I had taught them how to summarise chapters and had them colour these summaries with a highlighter so that we would be able to easily find them in their books afterwards. This way, the students could combine their own summary with an image that represents the chapter. It worked well, and the final product looked good - a complete pictorial guide to Blueback, courtesy of the students.

Last year's group

This year I repeated the activity but instead changed the format to large triangles rather than rectangles. Huzzah - bunting!

Putting it in order

Getting there

Putting it all together on a piece of string was a little challenging for me, especially in the 35 degree afternoon heat that had swelled up in my room after a long school day, but I eventually managed to get it all hung up on the wall. 

Done!

I'm pretty happy with it, and the kids were chuffed to see it too.

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.

How to Help Students Achieve in Assessment Tasks

Today and yesterday I had the pleasure of attending the 2015 Assessment in Schools Conference at UNSW Global in Sydney. One of the key sessions that had an impact on me was Professor Andrew Martin's work on Personal Proficiency and how we can 'optimise' the academic potential of students.

Within the first five minutes of Professor Martin's seminar I felt like a great cloud in my head had been dispersed. Since becoming a teacher I've becoming very familiar with the word 'resilience'. Not in the sense that I'm expert on it, simply in the sense that I hear about it nearly every day.

"Davey McHuddlestein is a really resilient student"

"That Rita Wong has no resilience"

"I wish I was a bit more resilient whenever I hear the music of Nickleback"

It got to the point where I was hearing the word so much that it had lost all meaning. During a recent Year 10 unit on Jasper Jones we did some work around the idea of resilience but, I must admit, I let the students lead on this theme because I didn't have much to say about it. 

Professor Martin's work around optimising potential involved a framework on the personal proficiency of students that struck a beam of clarity into my overcast brain. Resilience wasn't quite what I thought it was.

He asserts, as a research psychologist and educator, that there are three major variable traits within students that regulate the way they react to external factors. By extension, this no doubt applies to non-students too. They are:

1. Buoyancy

2. Resilience

3. Adaptability

Martin states that buoyancy (or academic buoyancy) is a student's ability to deal with every day adversity - the deadlines, the poor marks, the criticism, a fight with friends or at home, etc. This is interesting because these are sorts of things often heard bandied about in connection to the 'R' word. 

Resilience on the other hand, as Martin says, "was born on the street, in poverty". This is a person's ability to deal with chronic or acute adversity... things like poverty, disability, suspensions, chronic under-achievement, poor mental health, learning, repeating a grade, etc. Heavy stuff. Martin is very emphatic in separating resilience from buoyancy. Resilience is not a student's ability to deal with every day adversity.

The third of these factors, adaptability, is someone's ability to deal with change and disruptions to routine. Things that aren't really forms of adversity but can still throw a spanner in the metaphorical works.  Some people can deal with change well, some can't.

These traits are only the smallest fraction of what Professor Martin spoke about today - he also talked in detail about adopting a multi-dimensional approach to boosting academic growth, and the various factors that impede student motivation. 

One more thing that I will mention, however, is the Five Cs of Academic Buoyancy, which Martin listed as observed elements for good academic buoyancy. These are, in no particular order:

Confidence

Coordinartion

Commitment

Composure

Control

If students can maintain these then they should have no problem 'bouncing back' from every day adversity (which is the majority of what they'll actually face in a regular school environment, as opposed to chronic or acute adversity). For non-teachers reading this, all of this stuff is just as relevant for our own lives if we want to find any kind of success. 

It makes perfect sense to me in hindsight. I guess this is the epitome of one of those moments where a light switches on in your head, where a great educator like Professor Andrew Martin illuminates something for you.   

Click here for more information about Professor Martin and his research.

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). 

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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

Downtown Dallas (Final Day)

Downtown Dallas... they have a pretty good light rail system called the DART, that's what the cables and rails are for.

The hotel clerk told me yesterday that there was no public transport in Dallas but I didn't let this dissuade us from ditching our rental car. I just wanted to get rid of it so we could stop worrying about navigating any more of the labyrinthine freeways that riddle America's cities like wormy parasites in a piece of wood. That simile might sound a bit harsh, but they are truly nothing like anything we have back in Australia, and their intensity is no doubt compounded by the fact that we drive on the other side of the road.

I try to exercise an open mind when it comes to differences between the U.S. and Australia. Some things, like the differences in spelling, are rooted in each nation's history - the English colonised America in 1620, whereas the British colony in Australia wasn't founded until much later, in 1788. Things like that are a matter of history, so it shouldn't held against the Americans that they spell colour without a 'u' or say 'candy' when they mean 'lolly'. I guess I can understand the driving on the wrong side thing (Australia is in the minority when it comes to which side of the road we drive on) but, with all that said, one thing that I can't get behind is the way that gas (petrol) works over here. Here's how it goes:

1. You pull into a service station to get some gas.

2. You then have to go inside the service station and nominate the amount that you want to pay for gas, and then pay for it.

3. Then you go outside and fill your car up. The pump will stop when it gets to the amount you've nominated.

4. Then you have to go back inside if you want to add more petrol or get the excess payment refunded.

So inefficient! Do they just not trust anyone? Is it a way for gas stations to scam some extra money when people can't be bothered to go back in to get the few dollars change? I don't know, but it sure is annoying.

Anyway, Dallas. 

Skulls above store fronts are mandatory here.

The Old Red Museum in Downtown Dallas.

It's almost the same size as Sydney but way more industrialised and busy.  It turns out that there is public transport. There are trains and light rail and trolley cars, and we manage to work our way to Downtown Dallas from the airport after dropping the car off.

Got boots?

We learn from a nice couple in a western apparel shop that Texans pride themselves on being the friendliest people in America. I would say that this must be true, even the homeless guy outside the airport is unbelievably helpful - and that was after he realised we had no cash left on us. I would say, however, that some people are a little too friendly.

Mural inside western apparel store. Note the couple on the far right side... I think it's meant to depict a guy trying to remove a boot from his lady friend but at first glance it looks more like she's kicked him right in the crotch.

It starts at West End station, where I accidentally make eye contact with a guy wearing a purple pullover on the other side of the road. He nods at me and I take it as just more Texan hospitality. 

Nicole and I go into a steak house to get one of those famous Texan steaks but as we enter, Purple Pullover from the other side of the road follows us in. He hears us ask for a table and then starts talking to us about Australia and how much he'd like to visit. He claps me on the shoulder and wishes us a good visit to Dallas. 

Nothing particularly strange so far.

Later, I go to the toilet and Purple Pullover walks past me, pats me on the back and laughs, and goes back to standing at the restaurant's bar. 

When I come out of the toilet, he's at our table, talking to Nicole. He's halfway through a fairly detailed story about an Australian actor who was travelling to Perth from Sydney but then had to turn around to get back to Sydney because his audition for a part was successful. It sounds like someone he knows, because he talks about his sadness at this young man's passing. It's only towards the end of the story that I realise he's talking about Heath Ledger. 

Did he know Ledger personally? He talks about Ledger's young daughter as if he does, so I figure he might know the family. I listen intently as he goes on some more.

Nope. He doesn't know them at all. He's just told us the story of Heath Ledger because we're Australians. Maybe I should tell him about Johnny Depp. He rubs my shoulders a bit more before going back to the bar.

Purple Pullover chatting to Nicole. I almost didn't return to the table and briefly considered waiting for her at the airport for two days.

"Does he work here?" Nicole asks the waiter.

The waiter is confused, "Who?" We point the guy out, standing at the bar in his purple pullover. The waiter barks out a short, sharp laugh, "No". 

As we leave, Purple Pullover follows us out. It doesn't appear that he came into the restaurant for anything. He just stood at the bar the whole time we ate. That's weird, right? Once we're outside he sort of stands around a little distance away from us, as if he's deciding where he should go.

Nicole finds it hilarious that he kept grabbing or patting my shoulders but I'm starting to get a little unnerved by him. We start walking down the street and he follows, but then we change direction sharply and go into a store when he isn't looking directly at us. I watch him through the window to see what he does. He looks confused in the street, unsure where we went. I tell Nicole to take as long in the store as she wants.

The book depository from which Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK. The window in question is the only one half-open, far right and second row from the top.

Coming to Dallas isn't completely random for me. As a bit of a history nerd I was motivated to visit because I wanted to see the Texas School Book Depository and the site of John F. Kennedy's assassination. 

The book depository is now known as the Sixth Floor Museum, an educational experience centred around JFK's political career and death. It's one of those museums where you get headphones and an audio handset that explains each exhibit. I haven't experienced this before but I thought it was great... just the sight of a hundred people spread throughout the museum, standing in front of each section, listening to their handsets in relative silence... it's sombre and moving. There's a suitable dignity to it, and it grips you and holds you to each section - demanding your attention for a pre-set amount of time. More than once I found myself forced to consider the context of the photos in front of me, what it would be like to be there; to be in Jackie Kennedy's shoes as she stood next to Lyndon B. Johnson while he was sworn in as President- only a few minutes after her husband was declared dead. 

To stand just a few metres from that window and see the same view down onto Dealey Plaza that Lee Harvey Oswald had as he shot Kennedy. It's... indescribable. I literally don't have a single all-encompassing word for the way it makes me feel. This is such a big part of history... not just American history, it's world history. Kennedy's presidency was such a focal point for prominent issues in the early 1960s - the Cold War, the space race, the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, the clash between the right and the left in both the public and political spheres. His assassination and the resulting discrepancies that have led to accusations of conspiracy are an ongoing zeitgeist of our times. 

Photos on the sixth floor aren't allowed, however, I was able to get this pic from the floor above.

Even more than fifty years later, there's a kind of power in standing down by the street where he was killed. People flit about the plaza like bees; photographing, absorbing, reflecting. 

View from the grassy knoll. The quote on the huge plaque is from the unspoken speech that JFK would have given if he had made it through Dealey Plaza alive.

X marks the spot where the fatal headshot killed the President. Click to enlarge.

I'm not completely sure if this guy was a conspiracy nut or not, but he had his only little ramshackle stand and group of onlookers, which certainly supports such a possibility.

Plaque outside the Sixth Floor Museum. Note the emphatic underlining of the word 'allegedly'. Despite this apparent vitriol, the museum is actually pretty accommodating and balanced when it comes to the conspiracies and inadequacies surrounding the investigation into JFK's death.

Coming back to the hotel we catch our first taxi in America. There are two in the front, and I'm unsure if they're a bickering couple or just father and daughter. Initiating conversation with them seems a little difficult at first, Nicole asks if they live in the area and the driver replies with a very stoic "Yep". At a few points the woman lights up and engages with us in an upbeat fashion, but every now and again they also speak to each other in hushed, strained tones. 

Nicole and I note various fast food chains as we drive past them.

The driver says quietly to the woman, "What are they saying?"

She snaps back at him quietly, "I'm not gonna listen, that's dishonest".

They argue about whether a three-wheeled motorcycle is a trike or not. He tells her that she can't drive, and she replies back, "You don't know what I can do". He seems quietly exasperated and grouchy, "What am I gonna do with you?" and she is all sass, "You aint gonna do with nothing with me!" Then she turns the music up really loud so we can all appreciate a female rapper proudly referencing how empowered she is in terms of what she's willing to do in the bedroom.

It's a perfectly odd and entertaining way to end our visit to America. 

More Bible Belt shenanigans.

If I had to get figurative and compare the country to a fruit, I would say that the United States is like a pomegranate. Firm on the outside and seemingly uninviting, but filled with a seemingly endless array of gem-like seeds of experience, each one separate from the other. There are so many different facets to America - the 50 states each have their own character, but within that there are other forces at play. 

There are the indigenous tribes who have walked the land for their own eternity, and there are the conflicting Spanish and English histories of colonisation that intermingle and lay on top of one another. There's the American story of immigration, and the Revolutionary and Civil Wars that led to the modern nation we all know today. There's 9/11 and the War on Terror, which have shaped the country in the 21st century with its retro rhetoric of freedom and independence. There's the narratives of industry, capitalism and progress that have crafted a world wide super power. And then there's the quieter story of the decaying places that inhabit the great dustbowl between the cities, dwindling towns relegated to pockets of history that have been left behind by the huge interstate highways - a network of long sterile roads that bring the two coasts closer to one another at the expense of the folk in between. 

Even after we drove 4200 kilometres in two weeks, we still only covered parts of six states: a small segment of central California, a lonely stretch across Nevada, the picturesque south-western corner of Utah, parts of Arizona that we've built a familiarity with due to our previous visiting, the great unpopulated desert wilderness of New Mexico, and the continuously growing industry of eastern Texas. 

Train to the outskirts of Dallas, painted lovingly in the Texan flag.

I could see so much more. 

This was my second visit, and Nicole's third. Previously we'd only visited southern Califonia, lots of Arizona and a really small part of Utah. If I was to visit again I'd like to try to visit at least another six states but it's hard to fit that much in to just under two weeks. The people here are fantastic (well, to these two Australians, at least) and there is so much to see. I can't put my finger on particular highlights but what I'm gladdest of is the opportunity to walk the roads left by America's powerful history... to see Alcatraz, Chinatown in San Francisco, to revisit the Navajo Reservation and to see the seemingly ageless Zuni and Acoma pueblos even if just from afar, and to interact with the conspiracies that refuse to leave our consciousness - JFK, Roswell, Area 51. 

If there's one thing America is good at, it's mythmaking. Whilst we were in New Mexico, I noted some of the language used on the plaques about the area's history. The Spanish are referred to as 'conquerors', but Americans are 'pioneers'. It's true that history is written by the winners, but there's a real talent in this nation's ability to craft such a strong yet complex historical narrative that seemingly has the power to perpetuate itself. There's nothing official or endorsed about the histories we've born witness to here, they emerge from the people we speak to as if they were living entities.

I will miss it.