Topic outline

  • General

    • Online book URL

      For those of you who are interested in reading Animal Farm, here is a link to the full book. 

    • Twitter feed

      Throughout your study of the novella, you'll be asked, as a reporter, to (fake-)tweet about the various events you are witnessing, so as to maintain a Twitter feed of the events happening at Animal Farm.

      Your tweets should be constructed as follows:

      • They should feature a compact headline announcing the tweet's contents,
      • They should try to summarize the main events in a (very) brief, catchy sentence
      • They should never exceed 280 characters (including spaces, hashtags, and such like).

      You will find the Journal icon (Journal icon) each time you need to tweet about what you've studied.

  • Anticipation / cover

    • Collaborative pad URL

      Open the link to the collaborative pad. In the top right-hand corner, you'll be prompted for your name. Please state it, and once you're done, write down all the names of farm animals which you can think of.

    • Look at the following cover for the book we are going to study. Are there any animals which you forgot?

      Animal Farm Cover

      Go back to the collaborative pad and complete your answers.

    • Watch the following video, and complete the activity below.

    • Farm animals vocabulary File

      Study the following vocabulary and, when you feel ready, complete the crossword puzzle below.

    • Vocab quiz

      You will have 10 minutes to complete the following quiz about farm animals.

  • Text #1: Discovering the protagonists

    The main protagonists of Animal Farm are animals (as shown on the cover). We are going to try and find which, and associate them to their identities : an animal, a name, and a personality.

  • Video #1: Old Major's speech

  • Text #2: Beasts of England

  • Text #3: Taking the lead

    • Taking the lead Interactive Content

      "Three nights later old Major died peacefully in his sleep."

      Old Major, who has initiated a movement of protest amongst the animals, is now dead. It is natural to wonder who on the farm is going to take his place. Complete the activities to get a feel of who steps into his shoes.

    • Sorting out adjectives SCORM package
      Say whether the adjectives used to describe Napoleon, Snowball and Squealer are neutral, positive or negative.

  • Text #4: The Rebellion

  • Picture #1: The Seven Commandments

    Observe the title of this section: The Seven Commandments. What does it suggest to you? What is a synonym for "commandment"? What grammatical structure could you think of to express commandments?

    • The Ten Commandments File

      The "Seven Commandments" were clearly inspired by the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament of the Bible, in which God gave humans, through Moses, laws as to how to lead their lives.

      Observe the way the commandments are worded in the attached picture: which grammatical structure is used to give orders/dictate laws to humans?

    • Your ideas for commandments URL

      Follow the link to a pad where you can put in common your ideas of commandments for the animals on the farm. Don't forget to use SHALL + V to express a commandment.

    • The Seven Commandments File

      Display the farm's Seven Commandments, and compare them to those you had come up with in the previous activity. Had you anticipated these?

  • Video #2: Working together

  • Text #5: New roles

    • Text #5 File

      You remember which animals had taken the lead of the farm after Major's death. It was the pigs, especially three of them: Snowball, Napoleon and Squealer.

      While you read text #5, try to observe changes in subjects to distinguish where the text is dealing with each of them.

    • Snowball's occupations (l. 9 to l. 34) SCORM package

      There are a lot of capital letters in this part of the text. Why?

      • "Egg Production Committee", "Clean Tails League", "Wild Comrades' Re-education Committee", "Whiter Wool Movement" => the capitals give an official dimension to the groups of animals Snowball wants to form,
      • A, B, C, D, E, F, G => the animals are learning to read.

      Complete the activity to get a feeling as to how they manage.

    • Squealer's explanation (l. 40 to l. 57) SCORM package

      Squealer is trying to explain why the pigs drink milk and eat apples. Complete the activity to understand the rhetorical devices he uses.

  • Text #6: One leader too many...

    • WHAT? SCORM package

      After highlighting the time phrases in the text, you may have noticed an abundance of expressions like "just in time", "in a moment", "at this moment", "at this". These are time phrases indicating brevity and suddenness, that is to say lots of actions occurring at a fast-paced rhythm.

      This will help you get an idea of what is happening in the text. You can now concentrate on those fast-paced actions and pair them up with the appropriate subject in the activity.

    • The animals' reaction Quiz

      Did you understand what happened to Snowball, thanks to the previous activity? He was forcibly run out of Animal Farm all of a sudden by the threat of death. How do the other animals react to their charismatic, eloquent leader's running away?

    • Changes SCORM package

      Of course, now that Snowball has disappeared from the farm, only one leader remains: Napoleon, who had plotted this all along: he had reared the nine puppies into attack dogs, had plotted against Snowball, had called out the dogs so they could either kill him or run him out... He actually staged a coup.

      Complete the activity to find out what Napoleon changes, now that he is in control of Animal Farm.

  • Text #7: Confessions...

    • Confessions Interactive Content

      You are going to read Text #7 entitled "Confessions".

      The last sentence goes as follows: "And so the tale of confessions and executions went on, until there was a pile of corpses lying before Napoleon’s feet and the air was heavy with the smell of blood, which had been unknown there since the expulsion of Jones."

      Can you anticipate what happens?

    • Text #7b File

      After such a gory episode, what do you expect the reactions of the animals to be? How do you think they feel?

      Read text #7b and check your hypothesis against the contents of paragraph 1.

    • Dashed hopes... SCORM package

      Why do you think the animals feel so down? Read paragraph 2 and complete the activity.

  • Text #8: Spurious commandments

    • The Seven Commandments are also a thing of the past: they were written in Snowball's time, right after the Rebellion. As you well know from the previous activity, the animals feel that their past aspirations are differing widely from their present reality. Observe the picture of the commandments below once more, and find out which commandment of the past has already been broken.

      The Seven Commandments in Animal Farm, by George Orwell

    • Text #8a: Another broken commandment Quiz

      Complete the activity to learn about another broken commandment.

    • Text #8b: Yet another broken commandment Quiz

      Complete the activity to find out about yet another commandment.

    • Text #8c: The final straw Quiz

      Complete the activity to find out about yet another commandment.

    • Pigs walking, by Jim conte File

      Here is a painting made by Jim Conte called Pigs walking.

      Observe the attitude of the pigs, the way they look at the world around them. How could you describe it?

      There is a rooster in the foreground. What attitude does he have? Why?

  • Video #3: All for naught...

    • Visual hallucination File

      Watch the video. What does Benjamin see? It is a visual hallucination, as it goes away when he shakes his head. What does it mean, though?

  • A historical perspective

  • Final task

    • Your task Assignment

      You are a journalist who has been following all of the events happening on Animal Farm and you are about to write an article summarizing all of this (doomed) experience.

      You will, to that effect, briefly present salient individuals involved, defining events, and will not forget to highlight how reminiscent the whole experience was of the Soviet Revolution and the subsequent power play which it gave way to in the USSR.

      Do not forget to include testimonies of the diverse parties involved (you can re-use some of Mr. Jones's testimony which you have already written, for example).

      After writing your article, you will need to think of a punchy headline which corresponds to its contents. You have been practicing compact writing with the various tweets you have been drafting.

      Your will write a minimum of 300 words.