How to challenge your gifted and talented students when studying Animal Farm as part of their GCSE in English Literature:
Give your students control over their own learning by setting a variety of activities they could complete when studying the key aspects of the novel, so they choose what’s appropriate for them.
Link the novel to wider reading such as Macbeth, 1984 and Gulliver’s Travels and the wider context, such as Soviet Russia and the Russian Revolution.
Use all levels of Blooms Taxonomy when setting activities and questions, particularly the top levels of analysis, synthesis and evaluation.
Prompt specificity in exam answers and show how it can be achieved through A* examples for your exam board.
Set explorative questions to prompt deep literal and abstract analyses of characters, themes, language, structure and form.
How does Orwell use false logic in the line: ‘Certainly the animals did not want Jones back; if the holding of debates on Sunday mornings was liable to bring him back, then the debates must stop’?
In his essay ‘Why I Write’, Orwell wrote that Animal Farm was a book in which he wanted to ‘fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole’. What do you think this means?
How effectively do you think Orwell fuses together the artistic and the political in this passage? Explain your answer and give examples to support your points.
Choose another passage from the novel which you think expresses Orwell’s ideas particularly well.
Either: write a detailed analysis of how Orwell’s ideas are expressed in your chosen extract
Or: With a partner, each choose a different passage and write five challenging questions on the ideas in the selected extracts. Then see if you can tackle each other’s questions.
The extract above and all of the tips have been applied to the ZigZag Education Animal Farm Calls Gifted and Talented Pack for GCSE.