English Resource Booklet 2 - Animal Aid

Lesson 2: Literary Animals 2Teachers’ NotesFramework ObjectivesTLR9: Compare themes and styles of two writers from different times.TLR15: Extend their understanding of literary heritage by relating major writers to their historical context,and explaining their appeal over time.Resources• Extract 1: From Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy• Resource 4: Jude and Arabella• Resource 5: Framework for writing sheet• Resources 6a and 6b: Actions of the characters and the pig’s responseStarter• Remind students of their exploration of ‘View of a Pig’ in lesson 1 and elicit all they can remember aboutHughes’ writing about the pig.• If the homework task on the pigs factsheets was completed, you could consider the facts students discoveredabout pigs and any links between the facts and the poem.Introduction• Display the opening paragraph, explaining that this comes from a pre-20th century novel:They waited, and it grew lighter, with the dreary light of a snowy dawn. She went out, gazed alongthe road, and returning said, "He’s not coming. Drunk last night, I expect. The snow is not enough tohinder him, surely!"Ask pairs to decide who they think ‘he’ might be and what might happen in this story, bearing in mind thatthis is an extract which involves a pig.• Take feedback. This first paragraph is very short and there is an endless list of possibilities to answer the questionbut it is interesting to see if students pick up on the literary clues that are given. More able students might respondto prompts, such as the weather and the reason the woman guesses for the man not arriving: Hardy is preparingthe reader for the terrible scene ahead.Development• Distribute Resource 4. Explain that two characters are talking, and ask students to put the lines into a columnfor each character (one male, one female). This should be a fairly straightforward task as one character feelsmuch more pity for the pig than the other. An IWB version of Resource 4 is available on the Animal Aid website.• Ask whether students think it is the male or female character who feels more pity for the pig and why (this ismore to do with gender stereotyping but is an interesting aside!)• Distribute Resource 5. Complete PART 1 together.• Back in pairs, give students Resource 6a. Recap the nature and function of verbs and then ask them to fill inPART 2 of Resource 5.• Now look at Resource 6b and complete PART 3 of Resource 5. Before answering the last question, askstudents to share their opinions on this final question; this should help all students formulate ideas about thewriter’s feelings and how we can infer these.Plenary• Read Extract 1 together. A narrator and students reading the character parts works well.• Briefly elicit students’ initial ideas on the similarities and differences in the ways Hardy and Hughes portraypigs and their slaughter. What does it tell us about the writers’ opinions of killing animals for meat? How dothe two texts affect the students?• Students now have completed detailed frames to enable them to write a comparative essay with a title such as,“Compare and contrast the way Hardy and Hughes present pigs and their slaughter. How do you think thewriters feel about the animal in each case and how does each piece of text make you feel as a reader?”Extension ActivityMore able students could be asked to consider the following question, “In what ways do the poem, the novelextract and the pig factsheets challenge our preconceptions about pigs?”7