Curriculum ideas

[Cynthia Lehr]

Though I have freedom to do almost anything in my IB English courses with my 11th grade students, such is not the case with my freshmen World Lit classes. I work in a geographically large school district that caters to its deep-South, conservative constituents. I do some district curriculum work in the summers, and every summer we preview texts for district-wide approval for each "regular-ed" and Honors high school English course. That said, if anyone has any recommendations on short (250 pages or less) Chinese works that do not have any s-e-x, no foul language that begins with the letter 'f'... and is generally low on other profanity, please let me know! We are looking for World Lit (and of course, I'm pushing for Asian) texts for our 9th and 10th-grade courses. It need not be contemporary, though more often that does seem to be the push. Has anyone read the graphic novel American Born Chinese?​​

[clay dube]

LA Unified has an approved Asian / Asian American literature class. You can see applicable standards at pf 170 at https://achieve.lausd.net/cms/lib/CA01000043/Centricity/Domain/243/LAUSD-ELA-Course-Guidelines_0.pdf

You can see a list of books that have made the California Department of Education's recommended list by going to http://www3.cde.ca.gov/reclitlist/search.aspx 

Choose custom search and put China, Chinese and so on into the annotation list. You'll get quite a few hits.

Among the authors I'm fond of are several who produced novels and short stories. Many are available in free pdf downloads from the net. Lu Xun (Lu Hsun, especially a long story, The True Story of Ah Q, but also his Preface to a Call to Arms and Diary of a Mad Man), Lao She (play Teahouse, novel Camel Xiangzi - originally a bestseller as Rickshaw Boy with a changed ending, but many short stories), Ding Ling (a bit of sex and desire in novella The Diary of Miss Sophie, but revolutionary tenor in The Sun Shines on Sankag River). Two journals that specialize in translating short stories include Chinese Literature (from Beijing) and Renditions (from Hong Kong). I've recently been reading contemporary writers from China who write in English:
Ha Jin (War Trash, A Map of Betrayal) and Qiu Xiaolong's Inspector Chen crime novels (Death of a Red Heroine, Loyal Character Dancer) BBC Radio 4 produced dramatizations of some of the stories in the Inspector Chen series.

A classic novel of modern China is Ba Jin's Family. My favorite Chinese film is To Live which is based on the Yu Hua novel of the same name. The novel is different from the film in some important ways.

[Barbara Miller]

Here is a lesson about rhetoric using what I am calling "the rhetoric of monuments."  I hope to create more on this topic.

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[Barbara Miller]

Here is a three-day mini unit on 30 rhetorical devices as seen in images.  It is suitable for 8-11 grade students who have any degree of experience with rhetorical devices. 

This platform does not allow Word Docs to be uploaded, so please see the Google folder if you are interested in editing the Word version of Appendices A and C.

Here is the PPT/Google Slides link.  This allows you to save your own version and edit it if you choose to insert your own images:

  https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Jp1FYtbMoHyIm2NG_7_hRfiRKaajfp7ntNHrKhbUEEk/copy

 

 

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[Stephanie Kroop]

This lesson plan is still a work in progress with the goal to have all Documents shared by 8/26/18--I would appreciate any ideas to add or feeback along the way. I will be adding ALL resources to a GoogleDrive folder at the following link:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1HE9ExTxA5aiOmjEbi2uxUDpYsuf96nSD?ogsrc=32

CURRICULUM PROJECT: USC STUDY TOUR

Objective: Students will gain a better understanding of life in China under Mao Zedong during the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. Students will also gain a better understanding of the goals of the 1989 Revolts in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, and the political climate of communism in China today.

CA Standards: 10.9 Students analyze the international developments in the post-World World War II world.

10.9.4 Analyze the Chinese Civil War, the rise of Mao Tse-tung, and the subsequent

political and economic upheavals in China (e.g., the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural

Revolution, and the Tiananmen Square uprising).

Common Core Standards: Grade 10

-Write an argument to support claims with valid and relevant evidence

-Engage in a range of collaborative discussions

-Listen to lecture and video to particpiate in pair and group discussion

 

Day 1) Rise of Mao Zedong to the Cultural Revolution

-Daily Question: Who was the leader of China during the Cultural Revolution?

-Lecture: Mao and the Cultural Revolution (inc. images from Study Tour, museum)

-To be added later on GoogleDrive

-Crash Course Video: Communism in China

-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUCEeC4f6ts&t=582s

-Pair Share Discussion: share 2 new ideas learned

-Reflection: Personality Cult Comparison

In what ways were other Dictators like Stalin, Hitler or Mussolini similar to, or

different from Mao Zedong?

*HW: Reference Lectures on other Dictators: GoogleDrive available for students

 

 

Day 2) Cultural Revolution vs. the Great Leap Forward

-Daily Question: What program under Mao Zedong was primarily focused on moving

agriculture and industry forward in China?

-Mini Discussion: Mao Badges, Red Books, Propaganda (items from Study Tour)

-Group Activity: Image Analysis of the Great Leap Forward vs the Cultural Revolution

--students will complete a Chart of people involved, goals of each program, and the outcome

--Activity and Chart to be added later on GoogleDrive

-Group Discussion of each image

*HW: Articles for Follow-up: on GoogleDrive available to students

http://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/201107/05/P201107050128.htm

Day 3) Protests in China: Tiananmen Square 1989

-Daily Question: What was the purpose of the revolt in Tiananmen Square China in 1989?

-Lecture: 1989 Revolt in Tiananmen Square (images from Study Tour-Beijing)

-To be added later to GoogleDrive

-Video Clip: Documentary;

-Reflection: Discuss and Write a comparison reflection on the similarities and differences to the 1989 Revolts occurring in former Soviet satellite nations.

*HW: Video Clips for Reference: on GoogleDrive available to students

-1989 Revolts Video Clips: worldwide

-1989: Tiananmen Square- Full Documentary

 

[clay dube]

Hi Stephanie,
More on Mao badges:
click on the individual sections of the book to download the pdfs for free:
http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/publications/research_publications_series/2008/chairman_mao_badges.aspx

Images of Mao badges:http://www.britishmuseum.org/pdf/7%20-%20Plates.pdf

An essay by Bill Bishop about Mao badges: http://museums.cnd.org/CR/old/maobadge/

[clay dube]

Anthony's idea for Journey to the West is excellent. He can use images, especially, from the Wild Goose Pagoda in Xi'an, a place that was key in the transmission of Buddhism to East Asia. One could compare it to other fantasy literature and even to travel writing. I think it might be fun to compare it to Flowers in the Mirror, a satirical novel with a bit of feminism by Li Ruzhen from the 19th century.
About Flowers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowers_in_the_Mirror
Read a sample at: https://books.google.com/books?id=XHhR-6OGubIC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Journey to the West is a popular subject for Chinese filmmakers. Even with much improved special effects, the tv series from the 1980s is popular. On YouTube:
1986 subtitles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfhuN76mYTg
2013 Stephen Chow comedy version (trailer): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sh3m_WJJkmA
2017 series version (Chinese/English subtitles): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWnCdX6I1zs

[Cynthia Lehr]

These lesson ideas would fit into a larger research unit plan geared toward a 9^th grade World Literature course. It could also lead into Anthony’s lessons on Journey to the West…

Unit Objectives:

Students will…

• Formulate relevant, self-generated questions based on interests and/or needs that can be investigated.
• Research events, topics, ideas, or concepts through multiple media to explain how the use of different mediums, modalities, or formats impacts the reader’s understanding of events, topics, concepts, and ideas in texts.
• Examine historical, social, cultural, or political context to broaden inquiry and create questions.
• Organize and categorize important information; synthesize relevant ideas to build a deeper understanding; communicate new learning; and identify implications for future inquiry.

Focus Questions:

• What are some of the many forms of walls? (types of physical walls? types of mental walls? etc.)
• What are the purposes of walls?
• How can the purpose of a wall change over time?
• How can walls contribute to the well-being or detriment of the very people who create them?

Anchor texts:

• “Once Upon a Time” by Nadine Gordimer, 1989 (short story)
• American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang, 2006 (graphic novel)
• “Climbing China’s Great Wall” by Afaa Michael Weaver, 1951 (poem)

Possible supplementary texts:

• “The Great Wall of China” by Franz Kafka, 1917 (short story)
• “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1890 (short story)
• “The House of Asterion” by Jorge Luis Borges, 1954 (short story)
• “Mending Wall” by Robert Frost, 1914 (poem)
• Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, 1994 (use excerpts to help analyze comic/graphic novel formats)

Students would read and annotate “Once Upon a Time” over the course of two or three days leading up to this part of the unit. This short story is based on South African apartheid; a mother and father continue to build more safety measures for and around their property so as to protect themselves and their son. Unfortunately, in the end, the son is harmed by some of those very measures.

Day 1:

40 minutes for a whole-class Socratic seminar or small-groups (use Appendix B, if using small groups), according to teacher preference (10 minutes for students to prepare, 30 minutes discussion), on “Once Upon a Time”, focusing on the following:

• What are some of the many forms of walls represented in this text?
• What are the purposes of those walls?
• Do any of those walls’ purposes change over time?
• How can walls harm the people who create them?
• Guiding questions from the Psychoanalytical Criticism (Appendix A)

15 minutes for a whole-class mini-lesson on research/citation review

35 minutes student research in pairs on famous physical walls in this world, The topics would be randomly assigned and would include (but not be limited to) the following:

• the Great Wall of China
• the city wall of Xi’an
• the Berlin wall
• Hadrian’s wall
• Wall of Ston, Croatia
• Vietnam Veterans Memorial
• Western Wall, Jerusalem
• Walls of Troy, Turkey
• The chewing gum wall of Seattle
• Walls of Babylon, Iraq
• Great Zimbabwe Wall

Students may work electronically using Google’s Applied Digital Skills, the second module (Research and Develop a Topic), the 2^nd activity in that module. (The first activity has students create a fake news article to understand the elements of credible sources.) This is a free resource; each module has short videos to walk students through how to do that particular skill. Activity two has students choose a topic to research (which you instead assign to them), use a shared Google doc, and hyperlink sources into a short informational page (of a few paragraphs). The teacher should tell students how many non-wiki sources you want them to use. (Four is a good, short number.) Also, if you want them to have a more formal Works Cited page, do explain this. The online activity does not have them formally do so; that could be saved for another time. Finish for homework if need be.

Day 2:

10 minutes to talk through with partner who will present what. Short 1-2-minute presentations, straight from the Google doc, displaying a picture or two and summarizing the information researched yesterday.  Briefly share with the class the following:

• Who created the wall?
• When was the wall created?
• What was/is the purpose of the wall?
• How is the wall being preserved?
• Is the wall helpful to all? harmful to anyone?
• What does the wall seem to represent to the people who created it? To other people?

35 minutes for presentations to the class.

45 minutes: Intro to American Born Chinese: The first three chapters introduce all of the main characters. If that is too much to do together in class, narrow to first chapter or two. Chapter 1 introduces a little of the character Monkey from Journey to the West.  Use excerpts of Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics to help students learn to analyze not just the words but the visuals of the text. If you do not have access to that text, consider just reading the first chapter, then assign each student one panel to put into words. Then have the class read what they have written in order. This can foster discussion on what details students might have missed, how many words it takes to represent what the pictures did, etc. Decide how you want students to annotate or interact with the text, giving them examples so they can continue on their own for homework. For homework, students can read and annotate the next two chapters.

Day 3:

25 mins: Begin with having students analyze the poem “Climbing China’s Great Wall” using TiPCASTT. (If students are not already familiar with the acronym, it does not take long to familiarize them; the hyperlinked worksheet is self-explanatory. Also, have students note any similarities to their homework reading.

• During this time, you can do a homework check, having students visually flip through their annotations of American Born Chinese one by one, whether they did them in the book or on a separate sheet of paper.

10 mins: small-group discussions of the theme of the poem and of any connections they found to their homework read.  

5-10 mins: have small group representatives share group findings.

10 mins: whole or small-group discussions of other types of barriers, pulling in recent reads. Ex: in Ch. 1 of American Born Chinese, Monkey is physically separated from the dinner party by its locale in the sky. He is then barred from it for not wearing shoes. Meanwhile, the rest of the monkey population cannot even get to the party because they cannot create their own cloud chariot to go. (Nor do they even know it is occurring, as they cannot smell from that far away.)

35 mins: Individual research, minimum three sources, writing up research notes in a Google doc on one of the following topics that are found in American Born Chinese. This can be a small summative assessment on MLA research skills using an MLA rubric. (Appendix C). Several people per class will have the same topic; they need not do their research together.

• Journey to the West
• Chinatowns in the USA
• Arranged marriages in Eastern Asia
• Traditional Chinese Medicine
• Kung Fu
• Lao Tzu
• Chinese immigration to the U.S. in the 1900s

Depending on time, this research could be used for brief presentations as the content comes up in American Born Chinese, as students continue to read and discuss the graphic novel for homework over the course of a couple of weeks.

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Appendix A

Discussion resource: Literary theory—psychological criticism (adapted from the Purdue OWL’s information on Psychoanalytic Criticism)

Psychological Criticism Assumptions

1. Creative writing (like dreaming) represents the (disguised) fulfillment of a (repressed) wish or fear.

2. Everyone’s formative history is different in its particulars, but there are basic recurrent patterns of development for most people. These particulars and patterns have lasting effects.

3. In reading literature, we can make educated guesses about what has been repressed and transformed.

Guiding Questions:

1. a) What does the character desire? b) How do those desires affect the character’s behavior?
2. a) What does the character fear?   b) How do those fears affect the character’s behavior?
   • note: the most common ones are related to sex and death
3. Is there any psychological diagnosis the character might fall under?
4. examples: depression, anger issues, obsessive, obsessive compulsive (OCD), Oedipus complex

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Appendix B

Small-group discussion roles

Directions: Each person at your table needs a role and needs to contribute to the group discussion. Identify on this sheet who does each role.

Roles:

Moderator: Make sure everyone has a part. Pick the topics and the order in which you will discuss them. Do not let anyone talk for too long—politely move discussion along. Make sure the entire question has been answered—none of these should have one-word answers. Make sure all people participate—think of a way to include those who might not be as prepared in the discussion.

Recorder: Write or type the gist of your group’s answers for this discussion. You do not need to write word-for-word, but the bigger ideas should be there. If on paper, make sure it is stapled to this paper and that all names are on it. If on Google docs, make sure to share with your teacher’s email.

Social commentator: During discussion, try to elicit social commentary. During a question, if you hear anyone giving the ‘big picture’ ideas, or how the question brings up issues that relate to our society, repeat them to the recorder, as that is what we’re looking for. Questions to infuse for each discussion topic include ‘how does this relate to us/to present society?’ You are to answer this, too!  Skip this role if you don’t have six people!

Big Brother/Big Sister: You are the watchdog; on a piece of paper, write each person’s name, and after (or under) their name, tally how many times they contribute something relevant to discussion—not just ‘I agree’. Your tally paper needs to be stapled to this one.

Book-minder: You are to prod people (metaphorically, of course: hands to yourself!) to infuse textual evidence to support their answer—especially when you’re sure there is some. Please record some of the quotes your group uses to support their answers for each topic. You can write ‘topic 1’ ‘topic 2’, etc., and underneath each, write the quote(s) used to discuss them, with page# please!

Lit Connector: Whenever you hear an idea that might be somewhere else in literature, whether we read it for this class or not, infuse questions to your peers to see whether you can come up with those other texts. Keep a running list of the texts you come up with and the issues/topics they relate to. Submit that list with this paper when you’re finished. (If you don’t have 5 or 6 people in your group, skip this role!)

Discussion questions:

• What are some of the many forms of walls represented in this text?
• What are the purposes of those walls?
• Do any of those walls’ purposes change over time?
• How can walls harm the people who create them?
• Guiding questions from the Psychoanalytical Criticism (Appendix A)

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Appendix C

MLA Rubric

	Exceeds Criteria 8-10 pts	Meets Criteria 5-7 pts	Approaches 2-4 pts	Does not meet 0-1 pts
In-text citations present	All sources and pictures are cited in the research notes using parentheticals, and the parentheticals are hyperlinked to the online sources.	Most sources and pictures are cited using in-text parentheticals; all or most are hyperlinked to the online sources.	Some sources and pictures are cited using in-text parentheticals; some or none are hyperlinked to the online sources.	None of the sources and pictures are cited; hyperlinking is done by simply putting in the URL.
Works Cited Alphabetical Order of Citations	All Works Cited citations are in alphabetical order (numbers precede words) by the first word of the citation (excluding a, an, & the).	Most citations are in alphabetical order (numbers precede words) by the first word of the citation (excluding a, an, & the).	Some citations are in alphabetical order (numbers precede words) by the first word of the citation (excluding a, an, & the).	The citations are missing or are not in alphabetical order.
Indentation of Lines	All citations begin at the left margin with the following lines in a hanging indent.	Most citations begin at the left margin with the following lines in a hanging indent.	Citation indentation is reversed with the first line indented and the following line at the margin.	There is no indentation of lines, or the citations are missing altogether.
Completeness of Citations	All citations have all of the required elements.	Most citations have all of the required elements.	Some citations have all of the required elements.	None of the citations have all of the required elements.
Order of Elements of the Citations	All the citations have the required elements in the proper order.	Most of the citations have the required elements in the proper order.	Some citations have the required elements in the proper order.	None of the citations have the required elements in the proper order.
Punctuation	All citations contain the proper punctuation.	Most citations contain the proper punctuation.	Some citations contain the proper punctuation.	None of the citations contain the proper punctuation.

*Could add source credibility—no wikis, for example.

 

 

[Gabriel Valdez]

Good morning to all, and Happy New Year's, Festivus, Holidays and all of the like. I hope that this post finds everyone well. I created a livebinder for the resources that I have used during the district and regional presentations that I have had to this point. Inside of the live binder you will find videos, articles, links and more. Feel free to use and share the link http://www.livebinders.com/b/2391894 

Three of the activities are based off of student research that will be guided via the Livebinder and research databases. I included free links and some links that are subscription based and popular with various school districts. Essentially, they are looking up information on China and or Taiwan and creating an inquiry based itinerary and research prospectus. I usually have my students work with one partner and the reason that I included three different types is based on one overall itinerary that is time consuming, a compare and contrast China to Taiwan activity and a singular country based activity. Once the kids have their information, I have them create various products. So far I had this year's group create: brochures, videos, websites and cost analysis research plans. 

If you have any questions, feel free to email me @[email protected] 

I'm planning on revising this over the course of the year and do national workshops in 2019. 

 

It's not letting me upload some of the files - so I will have to upload directly. Thanks, 

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