Thursday, February 24, 2011

Farms and Fights

The people and the history surrounding the Russian Revolution are fascinating.  A czar and his family in power for more than three centuries.  A public fed up with their pitiful, poor lives while the royals live in luxury.  A massive overthrow of the government which, as perhaps its most ghastly event, includes the kidnapping and assassination of the czar, the czarina and their five children. 

Well, four children for sure.  As legend has it, the youngest daughter of Czar Nicholas Romanov may have escaped.  Anastasia's remains were never identified and women claiming to be her surfaced many times through the years.  Documentaries and animated films have been made about her and her family, including the conspiracy theories and escape ideas.  While the world may never know for certain if she lived a peaceful life, of sorts, after the death of her family, it is a piece of history that is fascinating.

Orwell's Animal Farm directly parallels the people and events of that period in time. And though his focus is on Russia, one can argue (and my students did!) that the political structure set up in the book mimics other countries as well, even the USA.  The link below connects to slideshows previous students did about these parallels. 

Russion Revolution Slideshows

In class, students will view a number of these documents, analyze them for structure and content, and then write about their new knowledge. Then they will also post a comment about this or previous posts.  Should be an insightful day, provided all of the elements come together seamlessly - computers power on and connect quickly, kids know their passwords, links on this page work, sites don't crash, slideshows play flawlessly, students bring paper and pens to class, copy machine doesn't run out of toner or get jammed, no surprise fire drills, my tolerance holds out on a Friday...

10 comments:

  1. I never realized how close Animal Farm is to the Russian revolution. Once I read through a couple of the slide shows I was amazed by the facts about the revolution, how the characters in the book are linked to the leaders and the people of Russia!

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  2. After I saw the slideshows the facts that Orwell wanted to make those connections to the Russian Revolution amazes me and I finally get who the characters represent.

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  3. I agree with Jessica. I never knew the book was so muck like the revolution.

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  4. I learned so many things about Animal Farm and the Russian Revolution. I was surprised as well, I didn't think so many thing tied into the Russian Revolution.

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  5. Animal Farm is a pretty cool book. It makes one see the correlations between Russia and Animal Farm. I AM COOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL :)

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  6. I knew about the connections between the main characters in the book and lead figures in the Russian Revolution, but I was not aware of the connections between characters like Boxer, Benjamin, and Mollie who represented different types of people in Russia during the revolution.

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  7. I never realized that there were so many connections between Animal Farm and The Russian Revolution. Once I made the connections between the characters I realized the insight of the parallels. I think watching the power points made me look at Animal Farm with a whole new perspective.

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  8. I honestly didn't realize how close it was to the revolution! It was shocking to me that the story could be put in a book that way.

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  9. I had no idea that Animal Farm was so close to the Russion Revolution. I never made the connetions while reading the book. The powerpoints were very interesting to read. I liked looking at the differant parallels between the characters in the book and the revolution.

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  10. The wealth of information gained from these powerpoints was amazing. The connections between the animals and real people really opened my mind to the book. The one that I found fascinating was the connections between Boxer the horse and the people following Stalin. <3 Mrs. Phillips.

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