Lesson Plan: Kavee Trivivit

Lesson: Themes of Greed and Privilege in Animal Farm by George Orwell (Chapter 9 and 10).

Lesson duration: 60 minutes (9-10am)

Students: Secondary 2 Express, Mixed ability

Class size: 39 (23 girls, 16 boys)

Class’s profile: Mostly comprised of Visual and Audio Learners with a few kinesthetic learners.

Pre-requisites:

1) Students have read the book and have re- read chapter 9 and 10 prior to coming to class.

2) Students are already grouped into groups of 5 (with one group having 4 members)

3) Every group has 2 presenters, 2 secretaries and 1 leader (The role is rotated among group members in every class)

Lesson Objectives:

By the end of the lesson, students should be able to

i) Identify the themes of greed and privilege from chapter 9 and 10 of Animal Farm.

ii) Find specific instances featured in the book to substantiate their claims.

iii) Relate the themes to real- life context and understand that greed and privilege are present in the society in various forms.

Plan: (Click on image)

Individual Activity:

Laws and rules are a part of everyone's life. Some are obeyed, some are not, and some are just outright ignored. Some rules are "bent" to help an individual or a group when they are caught disobeying them. 
 Identify and select 3 rules from the "Acceptable Behavior" section and 3 rules from the "Unacceptable Behavior" section in your student’s diary that you think are frequently changed to benefit one student or a group of students. 
 Rewrite these rules (just as Squealer did) to make exceptions for certain people or groups. Bring the rewritten rules for the next class.

Lesson Rationale:

The lesson plan is designed according to the five dimensions of meaningful learning, which are, authentic learning, recalling of prior knowledge, collaborative learning, self- directed learning and learning by doing.

The self- directed learning dimension is utilized when the students are made to read the chapter 9 and 10 of the book and are made to identify the themes prior to the lesson. This strategy will ensure that students will take initiative to read the book and research for themes through various means should they need to. This activity will also requires them to recall prior knowledge that they have learnt about the book in previous classes. In addition, the use of group discussions and class dialogues is to encourage collaborative learning by allowing students to learn from their peers. Moreover, the individual activity given to students at the end of the lesson is to encourage learning by doing as well as to enhance authentic learning as students are connecting the themes that they learnt from the book to real life context.

The lesson plan is also designed in close relation to theories of learning encouraged by Paulo Freire and William H. Kilpatrick. Freire has mentioned that “dialogue is an existential necessity” in humans daily life. Hence, the strategy of making the students brainstorm and voice out their ideas in class and in their groups will help to encourage dialogues between students. In addition, the use of dialogues as a means for students to express ideas and learn will also help to forge a sense of community as students who have similar experiences and ideas are able to identify with one other and assist each other to express their ideas in a more coherent manner.

Likewise, the strategy of having the students do the individual activity will also encouraged learning by allowing students to see the relevance of the themes in the book with regards to their concrete realities. The activity will link the themes learnt in the book to the society that the students are living in.

The lesson plan also expressed the aim of learning mentioned by Kilpatrick in which is the synthesizing of the different aspects of the process of learning into a unified “project”. This objective is achieved through the teacher engaging and probing the class to answer questions. This strategy will helped the students to come to a unify purpose of wanting to identify a common theme that is acceptable to everyone in the class. Hence, this activity can be viewed as a project where everyone is involved.

Source of video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZldlyeR8DU&playnext=1&list=PLF0BEAAE5D2C14571