8/7/2019 Gatsby Day Three
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Major Themes in The Great Gatbsy Lesson Plan (Day Three)
By Ryan Griffin
Standards:
1.B.5a Relate reading to prior knowledge and experience and make
connections to related
information.
1.C.5d Summarize and make generalizations from content and
relate them to the purpose of
the material.
1.C.5b Analyze and defend an interpretation of text.
2.A.5d Evaluate the influence of historical context on form,
style and point of view for a variety
of literary works.
2.B.5aAnalyze and express an interpretation of a literary
work.
2.B.5b Apply knowledge gained from literature as a means of
understanding contemporary and
historical economic, social and political issues and
perspectives.
Objectives:
1. To read and discuss the themes in The Great Gatsby as a
reflection of historical and cultural
context.
2. To analyze Fitzgeralds style against other forms and styles
of writing.
3. To analyze the ideas in The Great Gatsby in a way that
prompts us to engage with them in
our own lives and in society.
Context:
This is the third day of a 10 day Unit on Gatsby. The students
have been given a reading
schedule (attached) and have been given the assignment of
choosing a significant/relevant
passage from their nightly reading and bringing it to class with
a minimum four sentence
rationale for their choice. They have also been given a
Historical Context packet (included)
which included a number of excerpts about the cultural values of
the 1920s. The students
have already responded in writing to these packets and I will
make use of some of their
responses to stimulate discussion throughout the Unit. This
third day will be a discussion of the
second chapter of the novel which they will have completed the
night before.
Methods:
8/7/2019 Gatsby Day Three
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(10) I will open class by asking students their opinions on the
nights reading. Then, I will ask
students to share with me some of their favorite passages from
the chapter and explain why
they choose what they did. After students have shared a few of
their passages, I will collect the
homework and begin a class discussion about the chapter.
(15) I will begin with the opening paragraphs description of the
wasteland and make a Lost
Generation connection to T.S. Eliot and his poetry. At this
point I will hand out a copy of
Hollow Men and ask the students to read it silently and comment
about how the poem speaks
to Gatsby and to the Lost Generation. We will spend a brief
amount of time explicating the
poem, and then we will move on in our discussion of the
novel.
(15) I will cover the idea of Materialism during our discussion
and we will also talk about how
relationships between men and women are portrayed in this
chapter. We will analyze
characters and moments and connect them to our over-arching
thematic explorations relating
to cultural values, the deterioration of morality, and the
pursuit of the American dream.
(10) I will then hand out a paper with a few quotes from the
students themselves. The quotes
were taken from worksheets they filled out a few days earlier.
We will discuss the quotes for a
moment, and then I will assign the next days homework to be a
written response either for or
against one of their classmates. This response will be instead
of their nightly chapter response.
I will end class by reminding them to read the chapter and to
write their response so that we
can use them for a full class debate the following day.
Assessment:
There will be a high-level analytic and interpretive essay
turned in at the end of this Unit. Every
day we will cover moments in the novel and over-arching themes
that they will be using to
write their papers. Their nightly responses to the book and its
themes will form the framework
for their essays, and I will keep them accountable along the way
so that when they sit down to
write they will already have plenty of material to use.
