Animal Farm - George Orwell - Chs. 1-2

Extracts from Animal Farm (text & video) with activities to establish the key characters & themes. Materials are aimed at GCSE English Literature students new to the novel and its historical context.

The focus is on familiarising students with the central story before tackling the allegorical connections with the Russian Revolution. Similarly, characters can be introduced sequentially: Mr Jones, Old Major and other key (non-porcine!) are animals introduced in C1. Those scheming pigs (Snowball, Squealer & Napoleon) do not appear until C2.

Once the students have grasped the essentials of the story they can engage more with the original text and its historical sources.

My background
I have combined teaching with writing graded readers.I specialise in adapting classic texts for language learners and reluctant readers. My publications incude The Picture of Dorian Gray for Penguin, plus Washington Square, Vanity Fair and Gulliver’s Travels for OUP.

With Animal Farm I stay close to the original but reduce the density of the text and convert much of the reported speech into dialogue. The chapter structure remains intact, which simplifies cross-referencing for quotes etc. Materials relating to the rest of the novel - including a presentation on the Napoleon v Snowball struggle are available on the Animal Farm pages of the eslreading website.