Discussion Prompt Sheets, to Introduce Novels '1984' and/or 'I am David'

Discussion prompt sheets I made, to be used with small groups, to consider their opening knowledge of concepts key to understanding George Orwell’s ‘1984’ (which I studied with my GCSE group) and Anne Holm’s ‘I am David’ (which I studied with my KS3 group). Predictably, most individuals knew very little, but I encouraged groups to combine their knowledge and even compare and discuss between tables, to help get the most definitive response possible. It was very effective, in my opinion, and seemed to engage the pupils far more when it came to ultimately discussing with the teacher about the ‘key concepts’ and what these might have to do with the novels we were about to read. It also seemed to be a good way of focusing the young people’s attention on some of the things they would need to consider and pick up on in response to these novels. You could potentially return to these as you went along, to reflect on what you have learned, or what the novel really does seem to have to suggest about the concepts.

In terms of outcomes, this is probably more of a luxury lesson, for engaging and focusing young people’s attention, and priming them for later analysis. It does however relate to the curriculum with regard to understanding the purpose and context of the texts in support of comprehension, which would be the relevant learning objective for such a lesson.

These sheets were originally supported by a number of images from the internet, but I have deleted these as I’m afraid I couldn’t be certain about their original copyright. I’m sure it would be possible to get your own image prompts to replace these for key concepts, if desired.