RUNNING HEAD: I As a Learner Goal and Reflection 1

I As A Learner Goal and Reflection

Jami Anderson

University of Nevada-Las Vegas

CIL 621
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Reflection

This semester, I chose to focus on developing better ways to keep my students, but more

specifically my ELL students, involved in the curriculum by engaging them with real world

examples. For this curriculum and learning goal, we read the novel Animal Farm and completed

activities during the reading that related directly to the novel, but which engaged the students in

higher level thinking by coming up with creative ways to tie the novel into their own lives. I

have come to find in teaching in a high ELL population which is considered to be high risk, it is

crucial to engage students through activities that they can relate to and help them achieve a better

understanding of text and content.

The Process

In teaching this novel, the first activity I did with my student to initially engage them in

the novel was to develop their own country. In chapter two of the novel Animal Farm, the pigs

develop a type of “government” which they call “animalism.” This type of government is

supposed to satirize communism as the novel is an allegory for the Russian Revolution. In

developing animalism, the pigs create seven commandments which all the animals are required

to follow. To engage my students following this chapter, I had them develop their own countries.

This was a fun activity for them because it allowed them to get creative and personalize their

own societies. They were required to design a name for their country, a flag, and come up with

seven commandments of their own that every citizen in the country must follow. In completing

this activity, it assisted in making a great real life connection to the text by comparing the seven

commandments the pigs created to the seven commandments in their own country.

The next activity we completed was following chapter five. In the novel, the animals of

Manor Farm unite together and overthrow the humans who run the farm. The pigs, Napoleon and
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Snowball, fight for power of the farm and Napoleon ultimately wins. Following Napoleon

overthrowing Snowball and running him off the farm, I had the students create their own

propaganda flyers in which they decided who would be the best animal to run the farm. With this

project, they were required to have a catchy slogan and an image which represented their animal

of choice. This activity was a fun challenge and the students really enjoyed it. There were a lot of

benefits to doing this activity. It allowed them to think creatively as they were in charge of

developing their own slogan and picture. It also allowed them to think critically about the novel

and recall knowledge about each of the animals on the farm before making their decision on who

they felt would run the farm the most efficiently.

The final incorporation to assist with literacy and connecting vocabulary from the novel

to words we see in our everyday lives, I incorporated vocabulary into the unit. To connect the

vocabulary words to the text, I gave the vocabulary words to the students prior to reading that

section of the novel. They had to identify those words as we read and write the sentence down in

which the word was found. This activity helped the students with context as well as word

identification. It also helped them with literacy, which is a task that many of them struggle with.

The Outcome

Overall, the curriculum was a success. Having worked in at-risk schools for the last two

years, I am aware of the challenges I face on a regular basis when dealing with this demographic.

The high population of ELL students at Eldorado proves for some major deficiencies in basic

literacy, including reading and writing and I have found in the last two years that the most

effective way to teach the students and have them really understand the connection is to try and

connect the curriculum to their lives in one way or another. In the text, Increasing Student

Learning Through Multimedia Projects, authors Simkins, Cole, Tavalin, and Means report that
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connecting through student interests and student experiences are two of the most effective ways

to accomplish mastery with regards to literacy (Simkins, Cole, Tavalin, & Means, 2002). By

bringing their passion and their experience into their projects, they feel that they are more able to

connect and relate to the text simply because of their life experiences.

Conclusion

Through completing these activities, I feel that I accomplished my goal to the best of my

ability. While I feel that my students still need help with basic literacy as they continue their high

school education, I think I made some progress in allowing them to make connections to the text

while utilizing activities that kept them engaged and excited about the learning process.
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References

Simkins, M., Cole, K., Tavalin, F., & Means, B. (2002). Increasing Student Learning Through

Multimedia Projects. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum

Development.

Orwell, G. (1993). Animal Farm. New York: Knopf

Lloyd, S. (n.d) Animal Farm: Create Your Own Country [Pdf].