My students need 50 copies of William Golding's Lord of the Flies to help them understand the concepts of utopia and dystopia, as well as the many theories of how governments develop.
My students, in general, come from low-income, non-traditional homes where education is not always valued. However, our students come to school every day - our average daily attendance is over 95% - and yearn for the structure and stable family atmosphere that our school offers them.
They are proud of what they know, proud of where they come from, and break the rules when it comes to traditionally impoverished students.
My students succeed at a higher level than the research says they should, and are constantly looking for a challenge. This means that, as a teacher, I have to look for ways to challenge them and keep their interest in a quickly changing world.
My Project
For the past several years, I have begun my civics course with a role-play simulation where our class won a trip to the South Pacific, but our plane unfortunately crash landed on a small, deserted island. I use this simulation to help lead students into a discussion of how governments form to help them understand some of the multiple theories of government from philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. I have also utilized a dystopian novel project with my civics students in order to help them understand the rights and responsibilities that we have as citizens of the United States.
In thinking of ways to further integrate literacy into my content, I have decided to supplement the simulation with William Golding's novel, Lord of the Flies.
My simulation is based upon Golding's novel, and I think that by reading the novel together, students will be able to gain a deeper understanding of the topics, above and beyond what they learn from just the simulation. Additionally, the combination of Lord of the Flies with the dystopian novels we read later in the course will help students to create a stronger picture of the concepts of utopia and dystopia, as well as build their appreciation of our rights as U.S. citizens.
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