Rationale
This unit on Ji-Li Jiang’s memoir, Red Scarf Girl , is designed to teach students how and why to write narratives and tell stories, how to discuss a text by asking and answering questions and referring back to the reading, and how to incorporate research into a narrative piece of writing. These goals come directly from the Colorado Standards for Reading, Writing and
Communicating, and are appropriate to teach using Red Scarf Girl because the novel is a true story written in narrative form.
Of course, Red Scarf Girl is not the only text that would be useful for teaching students how to write narratives based on historical facts. It is an appropriate choice, however, for several reasons. The first is pragmatic. Red Scarf Girl , according to Scholastic, is written at a 6.1 grade level and is appropriate for 6-8 th
grade students in terms of interest level.
1
There is much more to a text than reading level, however, and Red Scarf Girl has much more to offer. It is well written and presents students with an example of good writing. Its subject matter, too, is worth studying.
The Chinese Cultural Revolution is a major historical moment that often goes unstudied in schools, and studying it allows students to think about a culture that they may not have seriously considered in the past. In today’s world it is more important than ever to prepare students to interact with people from cultures that are different than their own. According to the “NCTE
Definition of 21 st
Century Literacies,” one important 21 st
century literacy is the ability to “build relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and cross-culturally.”
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1 “Red Scarf Girl: A Memoir of the Cultural Revolution,” Scholastic, http://bookwizard.scholastic.com/tbw/viewWorkDetail.do?workId=1149913 (Accessed May 1,
2011).
2 NCTE Executive Committee, “The NCTE Definition of 21 st Century Literacies,” National
Council of Teachers of English, http://www.ncte.org/positions/statements/21stcentdefinition (Accessed May 1, 2011).

Reading a culturally relevant text like Red Scarf Girl is one way to begin teaching students how to understand individuals from different cultures.
In addition to Red Scarf Girl
, students read a small excerpt from Mao’s
Little Red Book .
The purpose of this reading is to provide students with background information about the
Cultural Revolution by giving them a taste of what it would have been like to be young in Red
China. Additionally, students watch clips from a documentary about the Cultural Revolution and read an excerpt from a history book on the same subject. The purpose of these readings is to teach students about the difference between expository prose and narrative prose and to show them how to use research gained from expository pieces in their narratives. I chose texts that were about the Cultural Revolution in order to create a sense of unity throughout the unit.
This sense of unity is not enough, however, as Peter Smagorinsky argues. He points out that a unit should be organized in such a way that it helps “students develop frameworks for thinking about issues so that they can think about new situations.” 3
This is exactly what the Red
Scarf Girl unit does. It focuses on the topic of the Cultural Revolution and uses this topic as way to think about the learning objectives. The final assessment truly assesses student understanding as it asks students to write a narrative based on a historical moment that is completely separate from the Cultural Revolution. Students use their knowledge to think about a new situation, which is a strong testament to their understanding.
Thus far I have focused on the narrative writing that is so important to the unit, but there are two more major components: the Socratic seminar and the oral presentations. I included four seminars in the unit plan for two main reasons. The first is the fact that the Socratic seminar teaches students how to ask questions, which is a skill listed in the Colorado Standards for
3 Smagorinsky, Peter, Teaching English by Design, (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2008), 118.

Reading, Writing, and Communicating. The second reason, equally as important as the first, is because teaching students how to ask questions gives them one tool that they need to express their curiosity. Jim Burke argues that the ability to ask questions is hugely important to student success, and he points out that the kinds of questions that are most useful for inquiry often must be taught to students.
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I teach students how to ask questions by providing them with the necessary scaffolding, including a lesson on sticky note annotations and a handout that explains different kinds of questions. Over time students will not need a handout to know how to ask the right questions, but, as sixth graders, this is the first time many of them have been asked to think so independently.
This may also be the first time that these students have been asked to speak in front of a large group, which is why I ask them to tell the class a story. Later in the year students will give a more formal speech; in this unit they develop skills such as making eye contact, speaking expressively, and organizing their thoughts in a way that makes sense to an audience. This assignment is also designed to build confidence. After presenting, each student receives an envelope that contains a positive comment related to the presentation from each of his or her peers. Public speaking is hard, and the public speaking in this unit is part of a larger scaffolding that I have planned into the entire year.
Last, but far from least, is the element of student interest and relevancy. Both the texts that I selected and the lessons that I planned should be highly engaging for students. Red Scarf
Girl is a book about a troubled time in China’s history, and the conflict that it describes should be very interesting to students. The narrator is also their age, and she describes issues that are very important to sixth grade students such as bullying and fitting in. The lessons are designed to
4 Burke, Jim, What’s the Big Idea: Question-Driven Units to Motivate Reading, Writing, and
Thinking, (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2010), 12.

appeal to a wide range of students, from those who enjoy working in groups to those who find working alone to be energizing, and I intentionally varied lessons so that they would appeal to many different intelligences. Each student should be able to find something that he or she finds engaging in the unit, and I believe that every student will learn a great deal.