Lesson 4

Lesson Goals

Texts

Core

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

Materials

Tools

• Attending to Details Tool

• Mentor Sentence Journal

• Animal Farm: Reading Schedule

• Working with Mentor Sentences Tool

Reference Guides

• Narratives Reference Guide

Question Sets

• Animal Farm: Section 1 Question Set

Editable Google Docs

• Attending to Details Tool

• Mentor Sentence Journal

• Animal Farm: Section 1 Question Set

• Working with Mentor Sentences Tool

Activity 1: Read – Discuss – Write

We will reexamine the language and meaning of the seven commandments of animalism and consider how the pigs’ learning to read and write has given them a special role and power among the animals.

Step 1

Follow along as your teacher introduces or reviews another tool you can use to guide your reading and discussion, the Attending to Details Tool.

Discuss what it means to attend to something, and how attending to various details in Chapters 1 and 2 has already given you insights into the novel, its plot, and its characters.

Step 2

Return to the Seven Commandments of Animal Farm.

Consider this text-specific question as you revisit the language and ideas of the Seven Commandments:

1. Taken together, what do the words and ideas of the Seven Commandments suggest as the central principles of Animalism?

As a class, note key words, ideas, and details that are central to the Seven Commandments. Record three of them that seem significant in the top row of a class Attending to Details Tool.

Move to the “Think about the Details” row of the tool. Discuss what each of the details means and how they connect to the question and to each other.

Step 3

Individually, write a sentence or two in the bottom “Express your Understanding” row of the tool that presents an observation or idea you have developed about the central principles of Animalism through examining details of the Seven Commandments.

Step 4

Note that it is Snowball the pig who wrote the commandments on the barn wall, after the pigs “by their studies of the past three months…had succeeded in reducing the principles of Animalism to Seven Commandments” (Chapter 2).

Discuss the following text-specific question:

2. How has learning to read and write given the pigs, and particularly Snowball, a special role and power within the animal community?

Activity 2: Read – Discuss – Write

We will analyze the language and imagery of the song “Beasts Of England” and discuss it as an important unifying anthem for the animals.

Step 1

Return to the lyrics of “Beasts of England” in Chapter 1. Discuss how learning this anthem by heart has influenced the animals and their commitment to Animal Farm.

Step 2

As a class, use an Attending to Details Tool to reread the first two stanzas (eight lines) of “Beasts of England,” noting details of what it predicts as “a golden future time.”

1. In what ways might the song be predicting or foreshadowing what could happen as the novel’s plot develops?

Step 3

With a reading partner, use another Attending to Details Tool to reread the next twelve lines of the song (up to “On the day that sets us free.”), considering these text-specific questions:

2. Which key details describe what will change once the animals have been set free?

3. How might this vision of the future be inspirational for the animals?

Step 4

As a class, discuss what you and your reading partner have recorded in the Express your Understanding section of the tool and how your observations have come from thinking about key words and images in the song.

Consider how the song may be painting a utopian vision and what the concept of utopia means. As you share and discuss the details you have noted, think about what they promise the animals and how they paint a picture of a world and life that the animals should strive to achieve: a utopia.

4. What are some implications of the penultimate stanza of the song and the language of its lyrics?

   “For that day we all must labor…” (Chapter 2)

Activity 3: Read – Discuss – Write

In reading teams, we will use an Attending to Details Tool to examine the language and claims of passages from old major’s speech.

Step 1

Having considered the importance of language, literacy, and Orwell’s use of words to tell his story, return to the speech given by Old Major in Chapter 1.

As a class, discuss the concept of a claim and the evidence that might be presented to support it. Reconsider the series of claims you previously discussed in Lesson 2:

“No animal in England knows the meaning of happiness or leisure after he is a year old. No animal in England is free. The life of an animal is misery and slavery: that is the plain truth.”

Join a reading team as assigned by your teacher and use an Attending to Details Tool to analyze an assigned passage of the speech.

Respond to this text-specific question as you study and discuss your section of the speech:

1. What claim or claims is Old Major making? How does he use language to emphasize the points he wants to make to the other animals?

Step 2

As a reading team, agree on a central observation you can make about the speech’s claims and how they are presented through Old Major’s words.

In the order of the speech’s text, share and explain your observations.

Use the organization of the Attending to Details Tool to present and explain what you have observed. Connect your team’s understanding (bottom row) to the thinking you have done to reach it (middle row) and the key details that support it (top row).

Step 3

Now discuss the concept of overstatement as defined in various definitions of literary and rhetorical devices.

Review the claims from the speech that the reading teams have identified. For each claim, identify what, if any, evidence Old Major presents to support his statement.

Then consider which claims might be examples of overstatement.

Activity 4: Read – Write

We will learn about the importance of paying attention to authors’ use of language and use a Mentor Sentence Journal to identify and write down sentences we find interesting or ones that are strong examples of language concepts.

Step 1

Having just studied the claims presented by Old Major in his speech to the animals, examine more closely an example of the sentences Orwell has written to present Major’s argument, beginning with

“Man is the only creature that consumes...”

and ending with

“...and the rest he keeps for himself.”

Follow along as your teacher points out the structure of the four sentences in this passage. Note that it presents two main claim statements written as simple declarative sentences:

“Man is the only creature that consumes without producing.”

“Yet he is lord of all the animals.”

These two claims are then developed and explained by the longer sentences that follow them, which present supporting evidence for the claim. These supporting sentences use commas to link parallel statements all beginning with “he”:

“Man is the only creature that consumes without producing.”

• “He does not give milk,

• he does not lay eggs,

• he is too weak to pull the plough,

• he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits.”

“Yet he is lord of all the animals.”

• “He sets them to work,

• he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving,

• [and the rest] he keeps for himself.”

Step 2

Having studied the structure of this passage and its sentences, you will now use them as a mentor sentence model for writing your own claim and support about “man.” In doing so, you will be practicing a skill sometimes referred to as “reading like a writer.”

Reading like a writer involves studying how an author writes and determining why the author makes specific writing choices at the paragraph and sentence level. Understanding what those writing choices mean and deconstructing how the author made those choices can help you emulate those choices in your own writing practice and diversify your range of writing strategies.

To record interesting sentences you find as you “read like a writer,” you can set up and maintain a Mentor Sentence Journal.

As you read the texts in this unit, you will use your Mentor Sentence Journal to compile sentences that stand out to you. These sentences might be interesting, or they might represent a strong example of a particular language use concept you have learned. You can use these sentences, as well as those from other units, to build a writer’s toolbox, wherein you have a number of techniques at your disposal to use when writing.

Step 3

Following your teacher’s directions, write down the passage from Major’s speech that you previously analyzed:

“Man is the only creature that consumes…”

You will now use this passage as a model for your own writing of a claim and supporting statements.

Following the sentence pattern of this passage, first write a simple declarative sentence that makes a claim about Man (note that you can make your claim based on your own observations about people or as if you are Orwell writing from Major’s point of view in Animal Farm).

Man is… (alternative: People are…)

Now write a second sentence that explains or supports your claim about “man,” using the pronoun “he” (or an alternative, “she” or “they”) and linking a series of supporting statements with commas:

He…____________,

he…____________,

he…____________,

he…____________.

Step 4

Record your sentences patterned after Orwell’s model in your Mentor Sentence Journal, underneath the original quotation from the text. Make a note about what the sentence patterns illustrate—what makes the sentence an interesting example (e.g., it directly states a claim, which is then supported by a compound sentence with linked examples).

Compare and discuss the new mentor-based sentences you have written with those of a writing partner, thinking about these questions:

1. In what ways do your new sentences follow (or not follow) the pattern from Orwell’s writing?

2. What claim do your sentences make about “man”? How does your claim relate to those made by Old Major in his speech to the animals?

Activity 5: Read – Discuss – Write

We will continue to discuss Animal Farm as an allegory, considering how its symbolic meaning might be communicated through the utopian language of old major’s speech, “Beasts Of England,” and the seven commandments.

Step 1

After examining how language is used and presented in the first two chapters of Animal Farm, write a few sentences in your Learning Log in response to these questions:

1. What do you think the book is saying so far about the power of language?

2. What role does language and literacy play in the unfolding utopian vision of the animals?

Step 2

Share what you have written, first with a discussion partner and then with the class as a whole.

In a class discussion, return to the concepts of an allegory and a fable. Think about the symbolic nature of the story so far. Consider this question:

3. If Animal Farm is in some ways an allegory or fable about utopias and the power of language, what do its characters represent?

Step 3

In your Learning Log, write a few sentences in which you present and discuss what you think the story so far might be saying about the utopian dream under which Animal Farm is founded and the language used to express it.

Refer to a character you have been following as an example of how the narrative is an allegory:

“A story in which ideas are symbolized by [characters], helping the story communicate its theme in a direct and transparent way”

or a fable:

“[A] story in which animals…take on human characteristics, often to teach a moral or religious lesson.”

(Narratives Reference Guide, p. 10)

Activity 6: Read – Discuss – Write

For homework, we will continue reading chapters 3–5 of Animal Farm, considering how the story’s plot develops through the events, characters, and conflicts that contribute to its complication.

Continue reading Chapters 3–5 of Animal Farm, considering these chapter-specific questions:

Chapter 3:

1. What do you learn about the developing relationships between the pigs and the other animals?

2. How is the pigs’ use of language an important basis for their power?

Chapter 4:

3. What happens before, during, and after the Battle of the Cowshed?

4. How is this battle another turning point in the story?

5. In what ways does the setting of the cowshed now have greater symbolic importance for the animals?

Chapter 5

6. How does the conflict and battle for influence between Snowball and Napoleon play out?

7. How does what happens foreshadow what might happen as the story develops further?

Overall

8. In what ways has a character you are interested in developed or been important in this phase of the story’s plot?