English Literature in BTX2 by Barry Allen, Lara de Blas, Clara Castelló, Max Gonzalez with video contributions from Irene López & Max Campo, Lara de Blas & Gorka Berraondo
All students in BTX2 have read Animal Farm by George Orwell this year, the original, unabridged version! Some activities were done in class to help consolidate understanding and then we asked students to talk about the book from different angles including: imagine a conversation between key characters; the use of animals as characters rather than people; how the book reflects inequalities in society; true democracy & imagine you are journalists interviewing characters.
Eric Arthur Blair, a.k.a George Orwell, was an English novelist who also wrote essays and poems. He was opposed to totalitarianism and his work focused on social criticism and democratic socialism.
Along with 1984, Animal Farm is one of Orwell’s most famous works, a book based on the Russian Revolution, but with animals in a farm instead of people. The book talks about the revolution of the animals in the farm against humans, and the aftermath of it.
In Manor Farm, the boar Old Major (Marx/Lenin) inspires the animals to revolt against Mr Jones (Tsar Nicolas II), the owner of the farm, to get better living conditions. After successfully evicting Mr Jones, Napoleon (Stalin) and Snowball (Trotsky), two pigs with very different ideas, become the leaders of the farm. After an argument between them, Napoleon ends up expelling Snowball from the farm, and the new found freedom suddenly takes a dark turn.
What at first sight seemed like Napoleon trying to help the farm prosper ends up with him taking advantage of the other animals. All the animals work very hard, except the pigs because of their higher intelligence which they use to change the original rules.
Here is some feedback from students about the book and the activities and you can see
Aiko Puche: “I really liked the shift in Napoleon’s personality”.
Max Campo: “I really liked it because it had nice plot twists”.
Elena Domínguez: “When I first read the title I thought the book was going to be boring, but I realized it was very interesting and I really enjoyed it.”
Below, you can find two videos of students from BTX-2C performing their oral project. Outstanding work!! Congratulations!!
Christine Connor ha dit
Excellent work!