1984

1984 by George Orwell Page created by Catie Macklem [|1984 Movie Trailer] Here is a link to the 1984 Movie trailer on youtube.com. It would be helpful to show this as a preview to the book as well as the movie.

[|The Matrix Lesson Plan] This lesson integrates the film The Matrix into teaching books like 1984, Brave New World and any other dystopian text. It deals with identifying dystopian societies and characters within a text and defining them.

[|Discovery 1984 Lesson Plan] This lesson plan helps students learn about the historical context of 1984 and compare and contrast life today with life in the book 1984. It also deals with the issue of privacy in the book and privacy issues that we have today.

[|1984 Anticipation Guide] Here is a link to a worksheet that students can work on before they begin reading 1984. It is also useful as they read because the statements are all very thought provoking and they may change their answers as they read the novel.

[|1984 Web Quest] This links to a webquest on 1984. Students will work together in small groups to answer the quesstion "Is Big Brother watching?"

Spy vs. Spy Lesson Plan This lesson plan helps students think about all of the ways that we are being watched. They read an article about surveillance technology from the NY Times.

Three Lesson Plans This site has some interesting ideas to use for teaching the novel. One of the activities is to assign the class new strict rules for one class period and ask them to fill out an intrusive questionnaire so they can get a taste of what it would be like to live in a society like that in 1984.

Orwell Biography This is a link to George Orwell's biography on About.com

1984 Novel and Movie Resources This links to a website with resources for many different topics. There is a section on 1984 which is mostly quizzes. The resource that I found most interesting was the PowerPoint with focus questions for watching the movie 1984.

NY Times Article This is an article that I think would be helpful for students to read concerning Orwell, Newspeak and our current society.

Newspeak This is a website that is dedicated to Newspeak (the language that was used by the people in the novel 1984). There are videos and articles about personal freedom and the destruction of language that would be helpful in teaching about such topics from the novel.

Teacher's Guide Here is a PDF version of the penguin teacher's guide to the novel. It has questions, topics and activities for before, during and after the reading of the novel.

1984 Sparknotes Eventhough Sparknotes is widely used as a way to get out of reading a text I do think it is helpful for students in addition to reading the novel. Students can go back over parts of the book and it will help them remember key passages, themes and also to remember the characters.

Orwell Today is a site that lists many of the topics from 1984 and provides information from the novel as well as news articles that reflect some of the same themes as the novel.

1984 Full Text This website provides information on George Orwell and 1984. It also provides the full text of the novel which I think would be helpful if students do not have access to a hard copy.

1984 Vocabluary I thought this might be a helpful resources because it has a lot of the doublespeak vocabulary words that were used in the book.

Apple Commercial This was the tv ad first used by Apple to advertise their computer. It is made to look like the 1984 movie trailer and portrays Windows users as mindless drones. This would be a helpful visual to get students thinking about the ways that we all go along with the collective and what parts of our society resemble Oceania.

1984 Book Covers There have been various book covers for the novel 1984 since it was first published. Here students can look at the different covers and see how they have changed over time.

This document is something I found on the EC Ning. One of the teachers does an immersion leson where she turns her classroom into Oceania for a day and it sounds like a great idea and way that students would definitely remember 1984.