Utopia Group Project—English IV
Purpose: To understand what a utopia is, how it functions, and how it can fail.
Goal: To create a utopian society and defend its flawless functionality via a class presentation.
Description/Directions: In order to prepare for the reading of Orwell’s 1984, it is imperative to understand what a utopia is.
Definition of Utopia— 1. Any visionary system of political or social perfection.
2. Anidealplaceorstate.
A) You will be placed in a group of no more than 4 people. Although all members of the group are responsible for ideas and additions to the visual, each member of your group will be given a role to act out during the creation of the project. Those roles are as follows:
1. Project Leader/Facilitator—This person keeps the group focused. If the group is
often off task, it is this person’s fault.
2. Recorder—This person organizes and writes down all the notes, ideas, discussion.
3. Mr./Ms. Criticism—This person is essential in making sure the group is coming up with the best, most effective ideas possible. This person should question every decision made in order to clarify why decisions were made. (What do you think about ______instead? How will this affect another part of the project? How could we take that idea to another level? )
4. Encourager/Questioner—This person should be a naturally outgoing person.
He/she gets everyone in the group involved in the discussion. If someone is not participating, the encourager will fix that.
B) Your group will be creating a brand new society from scratch. You can be as creative as you want in your creation as long as your society functions flawlessly both politically and socially—that is, it’s a utopia. This means your society can be a small state, a large country, all of planet Earth, or even a fantastic location straight out of science fiction. You can’t, however, just recycle the ideas of the United States… more on that in a bit.
C) You will present your utopia visually to the class and defend its flawlessness. You must include the following components in your utopia:
BUT FIRST… WILL YOUR UTOPIA BE BASED ON FEAR OR PLEASURE? (circle one)
- Government—Who is in charge? Who will make the decisions? (Monarchy, dictatorship, etc.)
- Military and law enforcement— How will you defend your country? How will you control your own people within the society? Punishments?
- Religion—Any specific deities? Mandatory? Separate from the state?
- Education—Free for everyone? Same education for everyone? Private?
- Economy—How will good/services be provided? Type of money? Employment?
- Family Structure—Nuclear families? Extended? No families? Marriages? Family power?
- Daily Life/Entertainment/Rituals/Traditions/Holidays—Self-explanatory
- Transportation
- Symbols—A flag? An eagle? Come up with a few.
D) During your presentation you will discuss the function of all the above components. You will NOT be allowed to have notes during the presentation. You should know your society well enough to speak about it using only the visual that you will present to the class. The visual can be a depiction of the city/society in action or it can be a collage of pictures representing each component of the utopia—your choice. Everyone in the group must speak without notes and must be able to speak about ALL aspects of the utopia.
Grades: You will be given three total grades for this project based on the following:
- Formative/Daily—Project Brainstorming
- Summative/Test—Project Presentation
- Formative/Daily—Post Project Group Assessment