Violence in 'Lord of the Flies'

In this lesson students are asked to identify key moments from 'Lord of the Flies' and comment on how the writer explores the theme of violence throughout the story (A01, 3). The lesson starts by asking students what violence is and list all the relevant moments from the book that they remember. A slide follows with suggested ideas to discuss. Student can then in groups consider the list of quotes from across the novel on the A3 sheet attached. They can stick them in their books, annotate and highlight them and then the teacher can annotate them on the board where the class can feedback their ideas. Since there are a lot of quotes on this sheet, student may want to allocate a section to each member of the group in order to get through it all.

Students are encouraged to think about the following questions:

- What is Golding’s message to the reader?
- What is he trying to tell us about what is happening to the boys?
- The novel was published in 1954. How might these quotes link to people’s attitudes towards the world after WWII?
- Some people think that the island is like a violent character itself. Do you agree? Why is this effective?

Students are then asked to write essay paragraphs independently using provided sentence starters which come in 3 formats: a 'layers of meaning' approach, PEA or the 'reading ladder'. An opportunity to self or peer assess their essay writing follows this.

The success criteria provided refers to the Edexcel English Literature course but can be adapted to suit your course.

This lesson, as my other Literature lessons do, includes:

- Links to online videos/websites (see 'notes' under Powerpoint slides)
- Starter tasks which introduce the main idea of the lesson
- Handouts of quotes / extracts from the text
- Differentiated tasks
- Opportunities for pair and group talk within activities ('Talk for Writing')
- Alternating opportunities for self and peer assessment
- Essay writing prompts to allow students to write about the text