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Jane Austen & Pride and Prejudice
Lessons and projects by students and teachers on the works of Ernest Hemingway, especially his first collection of short stories, In Our Time.
Elizabeth Bennet meets the Wife of Bath: Pride and Prejudice - Book 1 Group Work
This cooperative exercise is divided up into four parts. The first three parts consists of questions, including one that has students tie what they learned about the Wife of Bath to the type of feminism displayed by Jane Austen. The final part has students looking for the quotes about and concerning Darcy that have given the novel its title. In other words, they will find quotes that display "prejudgment" on the part of the characters. The questions also prepare students for the questions (specifically about Mr. Bennet) that will appear in the final group work.
Uncle Wiggly at Netherfield: Pride and Prejudice, J.D. Salinger, and defining boredom.
This Critical Thinking assignment contains elements of reading, research, movie watching, and ultimately writing. I usually give it as an extra-credit after students have completed Pride and Prejudice. The first part of the assignment has them read J.D. Salinger's short story, "Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut." Then, they watch the movie based on that story, "Fool for Love." Finally, they read some quotes of Salinger's on what he thought of that movie -- and try to tie all of this together with what one of the character's in his short story thought of Austen's Pride and Prejudice.
Pride and Prejudice - finding both - Group Work for Book 2
This cooperative exercise begins by having students look at a set of quotes from the second book that deal with the idea of pride and the idea of prejudice. From these quotes as well as from quotes they find on their own the students try to come with a set of principles that Miss Austen sets forth in her novel. It's fun to play with this title and also the other title of the book: First Impressions.
Diminished Expectations: A Pride and Prejudice Illuminated Text
An Illuminated Text by Shimeng Yu and Chen Feng looks at the almost impossible expectations that are put upon women in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Through the use of music, text, animation, and movement -- their point comes across strong and clear. To create an Illuminated Text from such a large text can often be daunting - as opposed to completely presenting a short poem, the students much pick and choose what they find as relevant to their presentation - much as they do with an essay. They do a terrific job here.
Getting to the Root of it All: Jane Austen and Primary Sources
This assignment which can be given to be completed either in partners or as solo work, has students examining the book as a primary source for a hypothetical research paper. I often assign the reasearch paper as students are reading Pride and Prejudice, and I try to make as many of my research paper practice and learning assignments related to the literature that we are reading as possible.
Lasting Impressions: Pride & Prejudice - Group Work for Book 3
This in-class cooperative exercise has students examine two issues central to Austen's book through a close reading of the text: What was the role of Mr. Bennet in the terrible business with Lydia (and how has their impression of him changed); along with Jane Austen's own view that her book was too light, too bubbly. Is there a more serious side to her novel, and how does that fit in with a close examination of Mr. Bennet's character?
Wollstonecraft reviews Austen
The aim of this session is to get the students to think about "Sense" and "Sensibility" in the Jane Austen novel of that name in relationship to its contemporary significance as well as in relationship to the construction of gender.
The hour long session begins with a student presentation based on an article by Mitzi Myers ("Sensibility and the 'Walk of Reason': Mary Wollstonecraft's Literary Reviews as Cultural Critique," in Sensibility in Transformation: Creative Resistance to Sentiment from the Augustans to the Romantics; Essays in Honor of Jean H. Hagstrum, edited by Syndy McMillen Conger, Rutherford, Madison, Teaneck, N. J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1990, pp. 120-44.). I deliberately assigned the presentation to a student who had studied Wollstonecraft on another course.
Document Essay
The first research that I have my students complete is what I call an instructional research paper. In other words, I want to carry them through the research process fist. I do this the first nine weeks of the semester. The second nine weeks they complete a research project which includes two short researched essays. I am submiting the documents I use for a researched essay on Jane Austen and her selection Sense and Sensibility.
Emma and Harriet - A Lesson in Friendship: An Illuminated Text by CML
This is a first attempt Illuminated Text done in MS Power Point highlighting the relationship between Emma Woodhouse and Harriet Smith in Jane Austen's Emma.
This is relatively short presentation. I am hoping to use it for demonstration purposes with students. I hope this stresses the text more than the "flash" of Power Point effects!
Pride and Prejudice: A Game of Manners
This is a lesson I've been using with great success for three years now (though with some variations). I teach British Literature to high school seniors, many of whom are not college-bound and therefore decidedly not motivated by the time we get to the third quarter and Pride and Prejudice. They often have difficulty understanding and/or relating to the rules of etiquette followed during Jane Austen's time.
Austen / Dickens Book Circle Discussions & Presentation
There are multiple goals of this book group unit. One goal is to survey some of the most important authors, genres, and trends in British novels from the first half of the nineteenth century. Also it is to focus students on developing their critical reading skills.
In group and whole class discussions the students ask both formal and thematic questions of the texts, and engage with the issues raised by these novels as they encounter them, with a specific focus on gender, class, and nationality; the role of the reader and narrator; religion; questions of identity; love, marriage and morality; and that peculiarly human problem, money--what to do with it, how to do without it, how our societies consciously and unconsciously judge individuals on the basis of their wealth and power, or lack of wealth and power.
Poetry of Austen's Contemporaries
As an introduction to reading Pride and Prejudice in my A.P. Literature class, I have students do a short poetry explication presentation. Using our poetry book, Perrine's Sound and Sense, each group has to select a poem of one of Austen's british contemporaries. They have two days to prepare their informal presentation. In addition to an explication, they need to include background on the poet as well as an analysis of what the tone of the poem might be saying about life in Great Britain at the time.
