Lesson 3

Lesson Goals

Texts

Core

• • Animal Farm, George Orwell, Signet Classics, 2004

Materials

Tools

• Animal Farm: Section 1 Diagnostic Checklist

• Character Note-Taking Tool

• Animal Farm: Reading Schedule

• Summarizing Text Tool

• Vocabulary Journal

Reference Guides

• Narratives Reference Guide

Question Sets

• Animal Farm: Section 1 Question Set

Editable Google Docs

• Animal Farm: Section 1 Diagnostic Checklist

• Character Note-Taking Tool

• Animal Farm: Section 1 Question Set

• Summarizing Text Tool

• Vocabulary Journal

Activity 1: Read – Discuss – Write

In reading teams, we will study how the plot and characters of Animal Farm are further introduced and developed in chapter 2. we will begin to develop character Note-Taking Tools for characters we are interested in following.

Step 1

With a reading partner, review the details of what happens in Chapter 2 that you have recorded on your Summarizing Text Tools, considering the text-specific homework question:

1. What are the key details of what happens “during the next three months” as presented in Chapter 2?

As a class, discuss how the events and interactions of Chapter 2 further establish the foundation or exposition of the story. Share how those details relate to or change the predictions you have made about how the narrative will develop and what its allegorical meaning might be.

Step 2

Identify a character who interests you, whom you might want to follow as the story develops further.

Join with another reader who is interested in the same character (from the list of characters introduced so far):

• Clover

• Boxer

• Benjamin

• Mollie

• The cat

• Snowball

• Napoleon

• Squealer

Review any notes you have written on the Character Note-Taking Tool for this character during your homework reading, or set up a new Character Note-Taking Tool for the character.

Step 3

Using your notes from the Summarizing Text Tool, find one or more passages in the first two chapters in which your character is described or otherwise characterized. Record the key words and location of these passages on your Character Note-Taking Tool.

In a class discussion organized by the list of characters, explain what you have learned about your character so far, citing the key passages you have noted.

Activity 2: Read – Discuss

We will review the section 1 diagnostic task, which consists of a portfolio we will work on over the course of section 1.

Step 1

Access the Section 1 Diagnostic Checklist and review the task:

Throughout Section 1, you have worked on analyzing a character and developing a first-person narrative vignette from their point of view. For the Section 1 Diagnostic, you will submit a portfolio of work that showcases your character analysis and vignettes.

Your end-of-section portfolio will include the following items that you will draft over several lessons in Section 1:

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

• An explanation of an evidence-based claim about your character’s role in the story and the character’s allegorical significance, which you will draft in response to the following question:

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

• Your draft first-person narrative vignettes in which your character introduces themself and in which you depict an important scenes from the character’s point of view

• Visual representation(s) of your character (original artwork or image(s) drawn from others’ interpretations)

• A reflection in which you discuss why you portrayed your character the way you did in the other portfolio pieces, making references to your first-person vignettes, your claims about the character’s role in the allegory, your visual representations, and textual evidence you recorded in your Character Note-Taking Tool

Note that you will be producing work for your portfolio throughout Section 1 of the unit and that you specifically will be drafting a set of narrative vignettes from a chosen character’s point of view. You will be selecting your character within the next few lessons.

Note also that you will either search for or create visual images that represent your selected character as an accompaniment to your first-person narratives. Initially, you will build a collection (or “bank”) of interesting images, which you will add to in Section 2 and eventually use as you design a cover or poster for Animal Farm in Section 3.

Step 2

Discuss the importance of selecting a character who is interesting and significant within the allegorical narrative and reflect on whether the character you examined in Activity 1 might be that character or if you want to consider another one.

You will make a final commitment to a character and join a character study team in Lesson 5.

Activity 3: Read – Discuss – Write

We will closely examine the first major turning point of the narrative, when the rebellion is successfully carried through.

Step 1

Turn to the passage toward the beginning of Chapter 2 that begins “June came…”

Reread the next three paragraphs, noting and discussing key details of what happens when the Rebellion is successfully carried through.

Step 2

Discuss the concept of a turning point within a narrative and its plot.

Consider what has happened in the scene where the animals take possession of the farm and drive the humans off. Reconsider the text-specific question from your homework reading:

1. How does the plot of the story move in a new direction during the “sudden uprising” of the animals against the humans?

Discuss the ways in which the uprising presents the first major turning point in the story and how it might send the plot in a new direction.

Consider how the setting of the story, Manor Farm, has changed in meaning for the animals, as it is renamed “Animal Farm.” Reread the two paragraphs that begin with the following line:

“But they woke at dawn as usual…” (Chapter 2)

Discuss this text-specific question:

2. After the rebellion, the animals gather on the knoll to view what is now “theirs,” make a “tour of inspection of the whole farm,” and even enter the farmhouse “with the utmost care.” What do their actions suggest about how the meaning of the farm has changed for them?

Step 3

In your Learning Log, continue to develop your prediction about where the story might go following this key turning point and the renaming of Manor Farm as Animal Farm.

Activity 4: Read – Discuss – Write

We will initially discuss the seven commandments as the core principles of animalism, learn about the concept of foreshadowing in a narrative, and examine the final paragraphs of chapter 2.

Step 1

Find and read the following sentence near the end of Chapter 2:

“The pigs now revealed…”

Discuss the potential significance of a key detail that is revealed in this sentence.

Consider how this detail might affect the predictions you have been making about where the story’s plot will go.

Step 2

Reread the rest of the paragraph (“Napoleon sent for pots…”) and the text of the Seven Commandments of Animalism that follow it.

Note that the Seven Commandments are described as “an unfaltering law by which all the animals on Animal Farm must live forever.”

Reconsider the last text-specific question from your homework reading:

1. What do the Seven Commandments of Animalism suggest about how the animals will live together on Animal Farm?

Step 3

Using the Narratives Reference Guide, learn about and discuss the concept of foreshadowing(p. 4) in a story’s plot and how the exposition of the story has already presented hints about what might happen in the future.

As you discuss the concept, think back to the predictions you have made about what might happen as the story develops. Suggest details from the text that led to your predictions and whether those details might have been examples of foreshadowing.

Discuss what the following events and details might foreshadow:

• Old Major’s speech and dream

• The lyrics to “Beasts of England”

• The pigs learning to read and write

• The Seven Commandments of Animalism

Step 4

Reread the final paragraphs of Chapter 2, beginning with “Soon there were five buckets…”

Discuss the following questions:

2. What do you think happened to the milk when it disappeared?

3. How might this incident foreshadow things that are to come as the story’s plot develops?

4. What impact does this kind of plot development have on the reader?

Activity 5: Read – Discuss – Write

For homework, we will use our Summarizing Text Tools and character Note-Taking Tools to write a brief summary of the novel’s exposition, focusing on what we learn about a character we are interested in following and a theme or central idea that has been introduced in the first two chapters. We will also begin reading chapters 3–5.

Step 1

Using the notes you recorded during reading and discussions on your Summarizing Text Tool and Character Note-Taking Tools, write a brief summary of Chapters 1 and 2, focusing on key events and what you have learned about one or more characters.

In the bottom section of the Summarizing Text Tool, write 1–2 sentences that sum up what you currently think the central theme or key idea of Animal Farm might be. Consider your current understanding of Orwell’s allegory and what you think his purpose in writing it might have been.

Step 2

Begin reading Chapters 3–5 of the novel, which will be addressed in Lessons 5 and 6. As you read Chapter 3, consider this question:

Chapter 3:

1. What do you learn about the developing relationships between the pigs and the other animals? How is the pigs’ use of language an important basis for their power?

Record new or interesting words you encounter in your Vocabulary Journal.