My 2014-15 PAPE 9 Kiddos from Robyn Russell on Vimeo.
"Animal Farm" Socratic Seminar with Pre AP Freshmen
The class in the video below has 21 Pre AP 9th grade English students and in this video, they are discussing one particular question from the "Animal Farm" Socratic Seminar that we had on April 22, 2015. The question they are discussing was, "Would the dogs follow anyone else besides the pigs?" The PDF file below the video is a transcript from the outside circle's Padlet discussion board of the entire seminar. The outside circle took notes and commented on the inside circle's discussion. Every class had a successful Socratic Seminar today with at least one, if not both groups fully digging into all the characters and events in the novel and comparing those characters and events to Historical figures and events that occurred between World War I and II. To understand the novel, "Animal Farm" the classes had to begin in the 1900s and review all the events leading up to World War I. Then, we did a 3-day study of all the events that occurred between the wars as Stalin was rising to power in 1940s Russia. "Animal Farm" is an allegorical novel detailing the lives of suffering animals under the hand of the evil, Mr. Jones (Czar Nicholas II). Old Major (Lenin) sets the stage for the rebellion and then dies. The pigs (The Bolsheviks) lead the rebellion, take the farm for Mr. Jones, and quickly turn into the hated masters they themselves once hated. George Orwell created characters and events in the novel that mimicked the Historical figures and events which led up to World War II. I will let you read the novel and see for yourself! FYI - you probably will not like the ending. My students have declared a mutiny and said that I am no longer allowed to pick novels for them. I count that last statement as a huge success! RR :)