Post Victorian Lessons for the Classroom

John Fowles novel is the perfect text to teach to show the differences (and similarities) between the modern and the Victorian Novel.  This group work, designed for 3-4 students to be completed in 40-50 minutes, is a kind of "meta-work."  The students examine how Fowles uses Paleontology as a metaphor for his attempt to recreate a Victorian novel, only using the sensibilities and "baggage" that come with being a late 20th Century writer.  From the way Charles dresses to the way Fowles recreates the fury over Darwin, the group work tries to show students what we've been trying to see all year: that we really haven't changed as much as we might think

As this group work is used at the end of the year, it asks the students to tie a number of ideas from earlier works in with this one.  Originally I taught this novel as a required text, however as we have lost nearly 20 days to teaching in the school calendar it always ends up as being extra-credit.  However, since it is the end of the year -- nearly half of the class end up reading the novel and doing these group work handouts -- often as solo work rather than working with a group.  This group work asks them to find specific links with other texts that we have read. 

This is not a lesson - though it would be pretty easy to fill a lesson and a class period with these poems.  It is instead some poems by Wilfred Owen, Sigfried Sassoon, Rupert Brook, along with two modern songs ("The Ballad of the Green Berets" by Barry Saddler, and "Everywhere" by Billy Bragg).  Though the teacher can create a lesson around these -- I believe that it is also possible to hand these to students and tell them to make of them what they will, especially since these would be given towards the end of the year (we actually don't make it this far chronologically any more).

An in-depth and critical thinking based partner work consisting of two handouts that asks students to look at some key quotes from T.H. White's The Once and Future King as well as Walt Whitman's "A Child went Forth," Burns's "To a Mouse," The Dark Knight (Batman) and more.  It asks students to consider what happened to Arthur in his growing up - how this fits in with what else they have read (or will read) including the quote from The Tempest - "What's Past is Prologue."

James Joyce's "Araby" has long been one of my favorite stories.  This year I wanted to do something different.  The students read the story the night before and after they took their quiz, I gave them the attached worksheet.  Students can work with partners - and they essentially annotate the text (I had given them a printed copy of the story) and write those annotations down to later be published on the Antext (electronic annotated text) of Araby on this website.  The two crucial parts of this group work ask the students to find the epiphany and the cllimax of the story.  Towards the end of the period I showed them the brief Power Point presentation (also attached) - and there is an amazing chorus of recognition in what most of them already suspected.