Wednesday, February 23, 2011

And so it continues...

Well, the structures are more definite and the animals are glued on.  But these perfectionist students of mine insist on "one more day" to finish their farms.  But they are looking good.  Again, pictures will be posted soon! 

Since this is a direct comparison by Orwell of the Russian Revolution, we'll be looking at those parallels in class later this week.  Kids will view a number of student created slideshows about the historical event and analyze them for effectiveness and content. Should be interesting.  In addition, we're going to do some critical reading of two political speeches - one by Patrick Henry and one by Old Major. 

Students, consider:
  1. How was your farm building experience?  Did you learn anything about trial and error?  Teamwork?  Construction and artistic representation?
  2. Is this a worthwhile project?  Should I keep it in the study of this book?
  3. What would you improve about the things we did as we read and analyzed the book?  Any suggestions for me that would be worthwhile for future students?
  4. What do you anticipate about reading the next book by Orwell, 1984?

11 comments:

  1. 1) The building of the farms was alot of fun. The teamwork was easy except when people in the group dont participate.
    2)I think its fun and yes you should keep it in the study of the book.
    3)No the listening to it on cd made it really easy and fun to listen to.
    4)The book will be very strong and very different then animal farm was.

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  2. The building of the farms are definitely a worthwhile project that should be kept in the study of Animal Farm. It helped me understand the scenes a little better. It gives a better understanding to how things were on the farm. I personally enjoyed building the farm with my group.

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  3. My farm building expreience was very enjoyable. I had a great group, and we worked well together. We learned how to build barns and houses out of construction paper, and a porch made out of popsicle sticks!
    This was a very worthwhile project, and I'm glad that we had the chance to do it.

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  4. My farm building experience was a worthwile experience. It made me look into the details of different scenes from the book. This project was fun, but at the same time was a great way to learn. It was good teamwork building skills, everyone in my group got along very well and we were able to accomplish everything we needed to get done.

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  5. Doing this project was a good idea. I learned a lot while having fun doing it. Are group had a lot of fun while still working.

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  6. While my group and i were building our farm we had a good time. It was a great experience to further understand this book as well as all the little details that realy do matter. Besides forgetting to bring our supplies for a few days, we worked really hard, completed it and had a great end result.

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  7. My farm building experience was worthwhile, it showed me that everyone had a different view of how the farm looked like, but we had a lot of similiar views about it. I don't think there is anything to improve as to how we read the book. Listening to it made it go by faster, and discussing it during class definitely helped.

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  8. I also agree that building the farms was worthwhile. I think it helped a lot of people to get that connection between a book and coming up with mental visual scenes to go with it. How they pictured the farm to look.I liked working with my group,it's nice to work with people you know don't. It gives you a new perspective on somethings. Definitely keep this project in the study of Animal Farm.

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  9. The farm building experience was interesting. It helped me kind of get an idea of how the farm looked or how one percieves the farm to look. I want to know how the pigs died..

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  10. I am really looking forward to reading 1984. I have heard from other people that it is a really good book. The posters around the room and the camera in the class room makes it seem more interesting.

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  11. I believe this was a worthwhile project. It was interesting to see the ideas of what others thought the farm looked like. Also, it made notice of the more important scenes that occurred throughout the book. We were able to focus on the details of the events which made things easier to understand.

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