J. Gardner
Topic: Humanity – Swift’s view…Our view
Length: 1 to 2 55-minute class periods
Unit Concept: The Illogic of logic – Satire as protest and search for meaning
Unit Essential Question: What is Satire and how and why do authors’ employ its use?
Essential Questions: What image has Swift’s presented through the mirror his satire has held up to us? What is Swift’s view of humanity? Does he have one? What view of humanity are you left with through your exploration of Gulliver’s Travels?
Dimensions of Curriculum
Content: Interactive Lecture in which students view images, read texts, and connect them to the questions posed by the lecture.
Product: 1) Student produced notes on additional texts’ connection to events, characters,
and images in Gulliver’s Travels.
2) Student produced exit slips answering the lessons essential questions:
What image has Swift’s presented through the mirror his satire has held up to us? What is Swift’s view of humanity? Does he have one? What view of humanity are you left with through your exploration of Gulliver’s Travels?
Process: Students will read, record their analysis of the texts, and discuss the texts connecting them with their view of women’s role in our society today.
Research: Reading of additional texts and excerpts of texts: excerpt from Aphra Behn’s, A Discovery of New Worlds, James Thomson's poem “The Seasons,” From Autumn, Joseph Addison’s article from Spectator 420, Stephen Duck’s poem “On Mites,” Margaret Cavendish’s poem “An Eare-ring round…,” excerpt from Christiaan Huygens's Cosmotheoros, excerpt from Laurence Sterne, A Dream. Students will read these texts and write down their connections for each text to Gulliver’s Travels. For example, Duck’s mites seem to act a lot like the Lilliputians.
Learning Objectives:
Students will examine how the world Swift lived in and the works of other authors, philosophers, and scientists affected his view of the world. This interactive lecture takes place after students are finished reading the novel Gulliver’s Travels and acts as a framework for students to place Swift and Gulliver’s journey within their own journey. Students will seek to find answers to Swift’s use of satire in presenting humanity, and use Swift’s lack of answers as an avenue to find their own answers about their place in the plurality of life experiences available.
AKS: LA12_A2005-3*, LA12_A2005-6*, LA12_B2005-7, LA12_B2005-8, LA12_B2005-10, LA12_B2005-11, LA12_B2005-12, LA12_B2005-14, LA12_D2005-26, LA12_E2005-38
LA12_A2005-3* — evaluate, listen critically, and draw conclusions to written and oral communication in a variety of genres and media
LA12_A2005-6* — judge and pose solutions to information from lectures, reading, viewing, and interviewing
Gifted Standards: I.c., II.a., II.c., II.e., II.f., II.h., II.l., II.n., II.o., III.e., III.i., V.a., V.d., V.e., V.g., V.j., VI.c., VI.g., VI.j., VII.b., VII.i.
Strategy: Interactive Lecture
Description of Activity:
1) The teacher will begin the activity by taking students through the PowerPoint of images presenting ideas, discoveries, and events that influenced the time in which Swift’s lived.
2) Students will be prompted by questions posed by the teacher and posed in the PowerPoint to think about these images connections to Gulliver’s Travels.
3) After the PowerPoint presentation and discussion students will be given texts written by contemporaries of Swift.
4) Students will read them and connect them to ideas, characters, and events presented in Gulliver’s Travels. The class will discuss the connections.
5) The teacher will lecture students by drawing in the texts the students have read and the connections they have. The teacher will frequently ask questions. See the attached lecture notes for examples.
6) Students will answer the following questions through the interactive lecture: What image has Swift’s presented through the mirror his satire has held up to us? What is Swift’s view of humanity? Does he have one? What view of humanity are you left with through your exploration of Gulliver’s Travels? They will record their answers to the questions on a sheet of paper that will act as their exit slip out of class.
Resources used/ materials needed:
Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels
Handouts of additional texts
Paper and pen/pencil
PowerPoint of Interactive Lecture images & LCD projector
Lecture notes (for teacher)
Assessment: Assessment will be informally determined through the students’ discussion. It will be formally assessed through students’ ability to record their analysis of the texts’ connection to Gulliver’s Travels, their ability to discern the purpose of Swift’s satire of humanity, and their ability to determine the novel’s affect on their own view of humanity.
Principles of Differentiation:
1, 2, 3, 9, 15