Now that we have finished reading the novel and discussed some of the themes found in it, we are going to compare and contrast the plot and themes of it to the movie The Village. It has so many similarities, but still have quite original storylines. Specifically, we are going to look for evidence of the following points:
The conflict between the ideas of the young and old.
How both societies live by “fear of change”.
Both societies protect their borders from attacks from “the others”.
Some members of the group are “different”.
Both groups have an explanation for why bad things happen.
The patriarchal leaders (the two most influencial men) are similar yet different.
We were interupted by having to go down for our H1N1 shots. We’ll continue on Monday.
We have finished reading the novel and are going to spend some time analyzing it now. We studied and broke down the meaning of a song called “The Crown of Creation” by Jefferson Airplane that was written in response to the novel.
Then we studied a handout that listed several themes present in the novel. As a class, we filled in the boxes of the handout that asked for an explanation for how that theme existed in the novel, and listed a specific reference to support it. Some of the newer themes students may not have encountered before were ones like “man’s inhumanity towards man” or “hypocrisy”. We’ll review them again before they have to write their Chrysalids exam.
We took a few minutes, though, to watch a movie trailer some English students made for the novel. It’s pretty accurate and definitely follows events of the book, but it’s hillarious to watch. Check it out.
We got into reading several chapters together last Friday and students were to have finished some reading over the weekend, so today we spent some time discussing the questions for those chapters, Ch 19-21.
Since students were so into the storyline on Friday’s reading class, we continued on through several chapters without stopping to do the Chapter summaries or questions. Today, students used the first part of class to play “catch-up”. They used their Chapter summaries in their package of handouts to remind themselves of what happened in previous chapters. Once they’d answered the questions on their own, they were guided through the answers and were asked to fill in parts missing in their own responses.
Then they continued on reading into Chapter 11. The action is getting good at this point!
Students were so enthralled in the plot of our story that we just read straight through the entire class. I’[m especially pleased that they’re so invested in the story and engaged that they make me pause in reading so they can discuss events and try to predict the outcome.
We began class today by reviewing the Chapter we finished reading last class, Chapter four. In going through the related questions we had a bit of a discussion about the focus in the novel on the “stability” of things in the communities surrounding Waknuk. Another main component of this idea is the avoidance of sin of any kind, and constant repentance. These are the things characters in the novel are particularly uptight about.
We read through Chapter 5 as well and will answer the questions tomorrow.
Although we were missing a few students, we began our novel study today. We spent some time going over the background to the story and I drew a time map on the board to make it clear that the story is set in the future even though people live as if it were the Frontier days.
We started reading chapter one and Riley was quite excited to predict what was to happen next. We’ll catch up the other students tomorrow – I told the ones present today that they’d have to do the explaining tomorrow and we’ll see how much they understood.
