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Section 1: Section Diagnostic

Prompt

For the Section 1 Diagnostic, you will submit a portfolio of work that showcases your character analysis, vignettes, and visual representation.

Portfolio Questions

  1. As the allegorical narrative plot of Animal Farm develops, what is the role and importance of a specific character?

  2. How might that character view and tell the story if it were written in first rather than third person?

Portfolio Pieces

Your portfolio should include the following:

  1. A Character Note-Taking Tool that you maintain while reading the novel

  2. An explanation of an evidence-based claim (short response) about your character’s role in the story and the character’s allegorical significance, which you drafted in Lesson 9, Activity 4, in response to the following question:

    • What role does your character play in the allegory of Animal Farm?

  3. Your draft first-person narrative vignettes in which your character introduces themself (Lesson 6) and in which you depict an important scene from the character’s point of view (Lessons 10 and 11)

  4. Visual representation(s) of your character (original artwork or an image drawn from others’ interpretations) (Lessons 7, 9, 11, and 12)

  5. A reflection in which you discuss why you portrayed your character the way you did in the other portfolio pieces. In your reflection, be sure to reference the following;

    • your first-person narrative vignettes

    • your claims about the character’s role in the allegory

    • your visual representations

    • textual evidence you recorded in your Character Note-Taking Tool (Lesson 14)

Guiding Questions

Use the following questions to help you evaluate and prepare your portfolio of evidence:

Character Note-Taking Tool

Do the entries on your tool do the following:

  • Accurately record the character’s name and role and any related key chapters, scenes, or events?

  • Cite the location of the corresponding details?

  • Record pertinent details, quotations, descriptions, examples, and other important information from the text?

  • Identify the type of detail using a code?

  • Explain how the details are related to the character topic of study or guiding question or to the text’s overall meaning?

Explanation of an evidence-based claim

Does your explanation do the following:

  • State a clear claim that communicates your character’s role in the story and their allegorical significance?

  • Explain your analysis of your character?

  • Use textual evidence from Animal Farm to support your claim?

First-person narrative vignettes

  • Are the vignettes consistently written in first person and do they tell the story from your character’s point of view?

  • Do the vignettes suggest how your character views the events of the scene and what their effect on the character might be?

  • Do the vignettes establish the character’s voice in a way that suggests the degree to which the character has changed (or not)?

  • How do the vignettes connect to and illustrate your interpretation of the allegory and your character’s role in it?

Visual representation

  • How does the image you have chosen or created represent your character?

  • What aspect of your Animal Farm character is portrayed by the image you have chosen or created?

  • If using an image created by someone else, who created it and when?

Reflection

How well do you address the following questions in a written response:

  • What is your current understanding of the allegory of Animal Farm and your character’s role in it (your evidence-based claim)?

  • How are your first-person narrative vignettes connected to your claim about the allegory and your character’s role? How are they supported by evidence from your Character Note-Taking Tool?

  • How did your understandings of the allegory and character develop as you read and discussed the novel, leading to your evidence-based claim?