Teaching Red Scarf Girl

The study guide created by the organization "Facing History and Ourselves" for the memoir "Red Scarf Girl" by Ji-Li Jiang is well-written and easy to use. Further information is also provided on the www.facinghistory.org website. The study guide provides an excellent Rationale for the teaching of the memoir which describes the life of an adolescent girl from 1966-1968 during the first two years of the"Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" in China. It then follows with a concise historical background of the time period that teachers will appreciate and understand. It includes the build-up for the revolution itself and then an explanation of the three stages of the revolution ending in 1976 with a short explanation of what would follow in the 1980's.
A brief section titled "Using this Study Guide" then outlines the different sections explaining that each section of the novel will be addressed using an Overview and Suggested Activities. The Overview for each section contains a summary of key events from the novel, places events in historical context, and connects the events to key themes that concern all adolescents regardless of time or place. These themes include questions of identity, conformity, labeling, peer-group acceptance, family loyalty, compassion, justice, fairness, civic rights, and civic responsibilities. The Overview for each section of the memoir also contains essential questions useful for classroom discussion and assessment.
The Suggested Activities for each section of the memoir include discussion prompts (essential questions) and Journal Writing prompts as well to help students reflect upon their own beliefs, experiences, and choices in today's society as they relate to universal themes in the memoir. The Suggested Activities section also contains 19 historical documents including propaganda posters, photographs, poems, songs, excerpts from other memoirs, government documents, and quotations from other people of the time period. Historical context is provided for each of these documents as well as suggestions for how to use them in the classroom. The Suggested Activities section also contains extensions for different learning styles and differentiation including ideas for drawing, speaking, movement, creative writing, and drama activities.
The next section of the study guide contains valuable Teaching Strategies including specific comprehension questions for each part of the memoir and explanations for creating Found Poems, using Jigsaw, Word Wall, suggested statements for Anticipation Guides, use of a Human Timeline, use of graphic organizers with character webs and charts, the use of Readers's Theater, specific prompts for text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world analysis. Specific guidance is also provided for analyzing the propaganda in the posters and photographs using different levels of Bloom's Taxonomy (Describe, Identify, Interpret, Evaluate) to help students develop media literacy. It also provides guidance for holding a Four-Corners Debate with suggestions of specific statements that provide dilemmas introduced in "Red Scarf Girl."
It is quite clear that a good deal of time and thought was put into the development of this curriculum guide. The very specific ideas provided make it extremely attractive for a teacher and the citations provided demonstrate the authenticity of the material. This guide would be an extremely useful tool for the teaching of this time period and for helping students to recognize the value in fighting brainwashing, discrimination, indifference, hatred, and the dehumanization that will result in society if left unchecked. The mission of the "Facing History and Ourselves" society is to "engage students of diverse backgrounds in an examination of racism, prejudice, and antisemitism in order to promote a more humane and informed citizenry." They aim to provide a tool for teaching history and ethics in order to fight hatred with "compassion, participation, and knowledge." They have provided that tool with this study guide for "Red Scarf Girl."

Teaching Red Scarf Girl would be an excellent resource to have in the middle school classroom. This curriculum unit is designed to accompany Ji-Li Jiang’s memoir, Red Scarf Girl. Teaching Red Scarf Girl has all of the resources a teacher would need to use this book in his or her classroom. Teachers can access a PDF of this unit by joining Facing History and Ourselves for free at https://www.facinghistory.org/. The unit provides historical details of the Cultural Revolution, essential questions for each section, and related primary documents.
The first section of the unit is a summary of the Chinese Cultural Revolution for teachers. It provides educators with the historical background of the Revolution, a description of it, and the three stages of the Cultural Revolution. This section is helpful because it gives background knowledge on what China was like at this time. It explains the events that lead up to the Revolution, and it details the consequences of the Revolution. The summary was written in a way that was clear and easy to understand.
The unit is then divided into six Parts. Each Part contains information on several chapters in the book. Also, every Part has an Overview and Suggested Activities section. The Overview summarizes the chapter and gives historical details about events in the chapters. It also connects themes in Red Scarf Girl to issues that middle school students face today. This part has essential questions based off of the reading which could be used for assessment. The Suggested Activities section has prompts for each chapter that would be useful for classroom discussion or for journal writing. Several primary source documents can be found in this section; ideas are given on how to incorporate them into a lesson. While the primary sources have a list of glossary words to accompany them, there is no specific vocabulary words from the book Red Scarf Girl. Finally, there are extension activities which are listed as part of the Suggested Activities section. These include ideas for readers’ theaters, timelines, webs, and more.
The final section is called Teaching Strategies. There are many Strategies listed with examples of how they could be used in a classroom. One activity is text to self, text to text, and text to world comprehension strategies. Another activity is preparing for a debate and developing media literacy. There are reproducible pages in this section along with comprehension questions for each chapter.