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Teaching Animal Farm Like It’s Your Civic Duty

Teaching Animal Farm Like It's Your Civic Duty

I view teaching Animal Farm as my civic duty. With fake news running rampant, social media propagating herd mentality, and political apathy growing by the day, I believe this book is more important now than it ever has been. Here are some ideas to ensure your students connect with and learn from the political messages in Animal Farm.

Teaching Animal Farm with Meaningful Lesson Plans

 
 

Explore herd mentality with an Animal Farm project

Animal Farm Informational Text
Click to download this herd mentality article and test prep
1. Focus on Preventing Herd Mentality- Before I begin planning for any unit, I ask myself what is the number one theme I want my students to understand. If they only remember one thing ten years from now, what would I want it to be? It’s not keeping up with the character names and who they represent in the Russian Revolution; it’s not learning the vocabulary. No, to me, the most important theme in Animal Farm is how “herd mentality” can lead to a country full of people who don’t know how to think for themselves. After reflecting on the most important part of the unit, I then focused on ELA standards that are best suited for recognizing, analyzing, and preventing herd mentality.
 
First, students analyze Orwell’s characterization of sheep and then look at how political cartoonists use sheep to send messages as well. Just google “Political Cartoons with Sheep” and a bunch of examples will come up:
 
Animal Farm Political Cartoon Project
 
Next, students read an informational text on herd mentality to learn how it works and how it can be prevented.
 
Lastly, using StoryBoardThat or their own artistic gifts, students can create their own political cartoon to satirize and show understanding of herd mentality.
Animal Farm Project
Student showing off his Animal Farm Project
Teaching Animal Farm
Click to download this entire political cartoon Animal Farm project
 
 
 

Change Animal Farm posters as an experiment

Animal Farm Posters
You can find these posters in my unit plan here: Animal Farm Unit Plan
2. Use The Commandments to Model Vigilance- Another thing I like to do is display the commandments either in my room or on my door during our Animal Farm Unit. I put them up and change them every time a commandment is altered on the farm, but I never draw attention to them or mention them once they are up. Undoubtedly, students forget about them and don’t notice when they change…until the last one. Since the last sign is drastically different, it’s so much easier to notice. This leads to a wonderful discussion in which students recognize how important it is to follow the news and take a stand against corruption.
 
 
 

Analyze and Recognize Propaganda in Animal Farm

Teaching Animal Farm Propaganda
Click to download these Animal Farm resources
3. Analyze and Recognize Propaganda – As another way to promote critical thinking in the real world, students learn to recognize propaganda and analyze how it’s used for political agendas. First, students analyze how Squealer is able to persuade the animals not to speak up against the missing milk. They look for ethos (emerald green), pathos (pink), and logos (light blue) then break apart his speech into specific propaganda techniques.
 
 
To keep with the same topic for a clear comparison, I then show three milk commercials all of which predominantly use ethos, pathos, or logos. Next, we look at specific propaganda techniques and discuss how this level of analysis should go into every political persuasion attempt we encounter.
Animal Farm Project
Click here to download your bar graph supplies

An interesting way to keep up with Squealer’s propaganda while teaching Animal Farm is by having students create a literary bar graph. Not only does this prompt students to take notice of propaganda in Animal Farm, but it also creates a great visual to discuss. What do you notice? How does Orwell believe most citizens are manipulated?

 
 

Combat fake news with relevant animal farm activities

Teaching Animal Farm
4. Combat Fake News- The important lesson of spotting fake news pairs nicely with Animal Farm (think fake updates on Snowball and hiding food shortages). Students will easily pick up on the fake news within Animal Farm, but I want them to extend this analysis to the real world. To do that, we look at this amazing fake news infographic, study fake news techniques on Snopes, then synthesize learning by creating fake news tweets from Squealer.
 
“You won’t believe how much milk and apples a pig needs for optimal brain health!”
 

“The shocking amount of food Animal Farm has produced this year!”

“3 reasons Snowball is the most wanted pig in England.”

Animal Farm windmill project

5. STEM with Meaning- I’m a huge advocate of designing STEM projects for the ELA classroom. As I was thinking of a project to use with my Animal Farm unit, I immediately pictured the windmill. There are so many ways to incorporate a STEM Windmill project into this unit. These ideas can range from in-depth and cocurricular or small and in-house.

*(in-depth) Use this guide to build a windmill at the start of the unit. Have students test their durability and efficiency. As with Animal Farm, their windmills probably won’t hold up very long. Have students work to make their windmills stronger. Once you get to the attack on the windmill in Animal Farm, ask students how they would feel if you destroyed their hard work. Next, ask students to research which agencies might benefit from destroying clean energy initiatives in the U.S.

*(easy but also meaningful) Have students think about the symbolism of the windmill and create a paper version of their own. The back of the paper is used to answer what the windmill represents in Animal Farm while the front is used to artistically express dreams for their own country. The results are really beautiful.

Practice poltical growth mindset

Teaching Animal Farm

6. Practice Political Growth Mindset- While I’ve always found the themes in Animal Farm important, I have a hard time leaving my students with the cryptic ending. It wasn’t until recently that I realized I could change this. Benjamin the donkey provides the ultimate example of a fixed political mindset. He doesn’t believe he can make a difference and just sits back and watches as his country falls into despair. This is the exact opposite of the mindset I want to instill in my students. Therefore, I want my students to recognize the pitfalls of a fixed political mindset and work to change theirs to a growth political mindset. This can be done with a fun role-playing activity.

 

First, students don these ridiculous Benjamin the Donkey hats and act how he would respond to motivational quotes such as, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”

 

Next, students look at passages from the text and reword Benjamin’s fixed mindset into a growth mindset. Lastly, students put on the “wise owl” hat and respond to negative quotes such as, “If voting helped anything, they would make it illegal.”

 

Connect Animal Farm to modern Issues

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    7. Connect Animal Themes to Modern Day Issues- There’s no point in reading Animal Farm if students can’t connect the text and theme to issues in their lives. To help them find connections, I like to find modern-day pairings that use animals to spread political messages in the way Orwell does. A really good example of this is Zootopia!

     
    If you haven’t seen Zootopia or if you’ve only watched it as a children’s cartoon, then you might be surprised to realize there are lots of important messages in this film. Most important is their use of animals to illustrate inequality in a world perceived as equal. This plays very well into Orwell’s message of “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

    If you are teaching Animal Farm, you can grab this FREE movie guide pairing by signing up for my newsletter here!

    If you want more movie pairing ideas, check out this post: Best Movies for High School and Middle School ELA

     
     
     
     

    I hope that these ideas help you to make a difference with your Animal Farm unit! If you would like the resources mentioned here as well as my complete unit on teaching Animal Farm, you can check that out here: Animal Farm Unit Plan 

     
     
    I designed this unit so that it can be printed or used in a digital classroom!
     
     
     
    Let’s use Animal Farm to make a difference!
    xoxo, Ashley Bible
     
     

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