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!

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 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

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 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 

Outlining my Year 10 Twentieth Century China Unit

As much as I love writing resources it's still very easy to feel overwhelmed when programming, not least because of the all the things you're meant to take into account. At the moment I'm putting together a short half-term long Year 10 History unit about 20th Century China and trying to get my head around all the bits and pieces that have to go into it. First, let's take a look at the mandatory stuff:

• Syllabus Outcomes
• Learning Across the Curriculum (broken up into Priorities and General Capabilities)
• Content 
• History Continuum (both Concepts and Skills)
• Mode of Assessment

And then, depending on your school, Head Teacher, or personal mantra:

• Eight Aboriginal Ways of Learning
• Super Six Comprehension Strategies
• Focus Questions

And (because I'm a sucker for Professional Learning), in this particular instance I'm seeking to also integrate the following:

• 'Focus on Reading' action research
• Grammar and Teaching course strategies

In the case of this particular unit, which I haven't really named yet, I'm going to leave out the Eight Aboriginal Ways of Learning; mainly because it's a bridge too far with all the other things I'm putting in, and also because I don't haven't that much of a working knowledge yet when it comes to the Eight Ways.   

So this is what I've picked out for the unit...

Outcomes: HT5-2, HT5-5, HT5-7 

These were picked out nearly two years ago when our faculty mapped out the History programs using the new syllabus. The first of these outcomes is about sequencing and explaining significant patterns in history, something which can be applied to almost any historical period. The other two outcomes relate to source analysis and perspective, meaning that I therefore have to keep it in my head to use a range of sources whilst programming.

Learning Across the Curriculum: 1 cross-curriculum priority, 2 general capabilities

'Asia and Australia's engagement with Asia' is a no-brainer here, and looking at China's more recent history provides a good opportunity for students to get a better understanding of our most powerful neighbour. This flows nicely into the general capability of Intercultural Understanding, and I've added Literacy in because it fits with my recent training in grammar and reading skills.

Content: 20th Century China

Originally, I was going to program a unit about UN Security (as referenced in the syllabus) but I decided this might be a bit dull for the kids, and a unit about China could build nicely on a Cold War unit that another staff member programmed for Term 2. Thinking ahead towards Preliminary Modern History, I think it's important that the students get a thorough understanding about a few key concepts (such as communism and totalitarianism) and it's useful to map backwards in this way because it helps to build student interest and knowledge should they choose to continue studying history in Year 11. 

The Chinese period I'll be concentrating on is 1950-1980, with particular focus on Mao Zedong's rise to prominence and the Cultural Revolution. Admittedly, my choice of China is a fairly liberal interpretation of a few references in the syllabus about modern China/India, but there's certainly room in the use of the term 'school developed topic' for this sort of thing. At the end of the day, focusing on China should hopefully generate some interest amongst students in the subject of Modern History, and getting seniors interested in the topic of History is pretty darn important. 

History Continuum Concepts and Skills

I've decided to pick concepts and skills that fit with my source analysis and perspectives outcomes, the concepts being Contestability, Empathetic Understanding and Perspectives, and the skills being Source Analysis, Comprehension (of chronology, terms and concepts), Empathetic Understanding and Contesting significance of ideas or people in regards to historical events. 

It's all stuff that fits together really well, and they're things that Year 10 History students should really be starting to get to better grips with at this point in their education.

Mode of Assessment: Source Analysis / Sequencing through Examination

Much like the outcomes, the mode of assessment was decided long ago so it isn't really a flexible element in this process. The mode of assessment therefore became my baseline for much of this unit, and I chose many of the above elements based on how they would support this assessment. 

I've generally found it most useful to have the assessment task created and sorted before I start to program a unit. The exception to this is when it's an examination that covers a range of unit elements (as opposed to an take-home assessment task, research project, or something else). In order to balance the content of the exam I prefer to have the whole unit done before I put it together. I'll have an idea of what I want to cover in the exam, and then plan my unit accordingly. In this case, we have the added pressure of needing an exam to happen relatively early in the unit (so results can be gathered in time for Yearly Reports to go out to the Year 10 students before the term ends). So, with all that in mind, this examination will predominantly cover source analysis and the skills that have been taught (rather than content).

Super Six Comprehension Skills

Our school implemented this literacy initiative roughly two years ago. They skills are designed to increase comprehension and literacy across all KLAs, and I've found them pretty useful in engaging students of lower ability. The six skills are: Monitoring, Summarising, Visualising, Predicting, Questioning, and Making Connections. 

Focus Questions

As this unit will only go for 8-10 lessons, I've decided to just use one focus question to drive it: To what extent was Chairman Mao responsible for China's emergence into the modern world? This should provide enough scope to cover Mao's astounding and shocking work in the '50s, '60s and '70s, and allow for some discussion of reforms instigated by his successor, Deng Xiaoping.

Focus on Reading / Grammar

These were both quite comprehensive courses that took place over a long time. The Focus on Reading stuff equates to 50 hours of self-directed work revolving around building fluency in order to increase literacy, and the Grammar course took place over 13 weeks (I only just finished it yesterday, actually). Both of these courses require me to incorporate their content into a unit, so I've boiled down my learning into a few 'skills' to be covered:

• Building Fluency
• Monitoring
• Text Chains (for Cohesion)
• Lexical Understanding
• Vocabulary Building
• Taxonomy Building
• Decoding
• Text Sets
• Joint Text Construction

Each of these are tied to various activities that I've picked up from the two courses, and should (hopefully!) help students build their reading and writing skills. I've found that they also work well with source analysis.

And that's my starting point for this unit. 

Outline of Unit - click to view.

Creating a Unit from Scratch (Stage 5, Year 10, History)

 

I like to metaphorically dine on the fillings of many pies.

At the time of writing, I am in the closing weeks of a Grammar and Teaching course administered by Grammar guru Joanne Rossbridge (highly recommended by the way, and see the book above as an invaluable associated resource). The final assignment of this course is to design a unit of work that incorporates our learning about grammar and how it can be used to both strengthen literacy and strengthen our subject areas.

Well, it just so happens that at my school I am due to create a unit of work for our faculty, a half-term Year 10 History unit to close the assessable portion of the year in Term 4. Joanne has recommended that we put our grammar knowledge into practice with an actual unit that we would be programming anyway, so as not to double up on our workloads (teachers are busy, y'know).

Here's the doozy though, I am also currently undertaking a fairly autonomous course under the 'Focus on Reading' banner at my school. This piece of Professional Learning also requires me to put into practice what I have learned, in this case strengthening literacy by focusing on fluency and wide reading text sets. This involves me undertaking some action research with a class, using my findings to design some lessons, trying out said lessons on the class, and then presenting my research and progress back to the school.

So, I am going to kill three birds with one stone - a relatively compact unit that meets the criteria and requirements of both projects; Grammar and Teaching, and Focus on Reading. They can't really be that different, right?

My aim is to create 9 or so lessons that teach grammar, History and reading-fluency. A pie of several flavours, and not one that doesn't require some thinking to cook up! The History in question that I'm focusing on is China in the 20th Century.

Stay tuned as I post my process in putting this unit together from start to finish.