Pie of Blame

I started teaching Animal Farm last year and I love teaching it with all my heart. Especially in our current political climate, kids make so many great connections no matter where on the political spectrum they land.

The ending of Animal Farm coincided with Christmas break, so I wanted to do something on topic but different than anything else we have done. One of my colleagues went to NCTE and came home with this lesson called the Pie of Blame. Basically, students have to assign which characters what kind of blame for the resolution of the book. If you are familiar with Animal Farm, I asked them which animals were to blame for the state of the farm.

I have been struggling with my honors students to get them to have the types of conversations that my gifted students have. This activity was just the thing I was looking for. I have never seen any of my students as engaged and passionate as they were while they completed this activity. I loved how engaged each of them were as they were arguing why Napoleon should have this percentage, why Boxer should be included, etc.
All in all, it only took about 15-20 minutes. I didn't have them present, I would have liked to have time for that but we had a shortened schedule so it didn't work out.

If you would like to see the powerpoint I used with the instructions, you can see it here.

I would highly recommend this lesson. You can use it with any novel and it will foster great discussion in the classroom.

Thanks for letting me steal!