The Walls We Build

[Cynthia Lehr]

These lesson ideas would fit into a research unit plan geared toward a 9^th grade World Literature course. It could 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?

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 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.

 

 

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