Of Mice and Men: Characterisation of Crooks

This engaging and informative lesson aims to improve students’ knowledge and understanding of the character of Crooks in Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men: His dreams, his loneliness, and how his plight is a product of living in 1930s America. The lesson also aims to improve students’ analytical skills, so that they can demonstrate sustained and sophisticated interpretations of the character.

This pack includes the full lesson presentation, with tasks and key information, an extract from the text with close reading questions, a writing to analyse help-sheet, and full teacher guidance. The learning journey is clear and progressive, following a pathway of increasingly more difficult tasks, including:
- An opening task to ascertain what is known about Crooks, and racism in 1930s America
- An extract from the text that highlights some of his characteristics and his loneliness.
- Questions to encourage students to infer and deduce hidden meanings, and understand Steinbeck’s message,
- Joint creation of an analysis success criteria;
- An opportunity to answer an exam style question based upon the character of Crooks;
- A chance to peer assess against the success criteria.

All images are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on the final slide of the presentation.

You can choose to buy this resource alone, or as part of the ‘Of Mice and Men - All Lessons and Scheme’ bundle, which contains seven full lessons, resources, teachers notes, and PowerPoint presentations, plus a Pointless Of Mice and Men game, for just £5!