ReadWriteThink: Figuring Out Swift and Seuss

Forgive me as I freewrite a splat. You see I’m a little stuck on a lesson plan, and I can’t figure out where I want it to go (other than to end up as a perfect piece that I can be happy with).

Okay, the lesson idea: using Dr. Seuss to introduce satirical techniques used by Jonathan Swift. It’s a Dr. Seuss book that I used when I was teaching, The Butter Battle Book, and I found an article that does something similar to what I did. The events in the Dr. Seuss book are compared to the political satire of the Swift’s Big-Endians and Little-Endians. Simple and clear parallels that students can usually see.

My problem is that I can’t tell where the lesson is going. You read both texts and discuss&#8212then what? Do they just discuss? That can’t be enough. And I need to work in an interactive. I could do the simple Venn Diagram or Chart, but I’d really like to come up with something more sophisticated or at least less like a hoop to jump through. I want something that is actually important to the lesson. Not that comparing things in a chart of Venn diagram isn’t important. I just think that I can do better than that.

I think that I need some kind of divine inspiration. I feel like there’s some really cool idea out there that I am just not thinking of for some reason. I could ask students to write their own satirical piece on a current issue, but the lesson is supposed to be an introduction to Gulliver’s Travels. I have nothing against writing satire, but it seems off-topic. Perhaps what would make the most sense would be to work through the historical allusions in the Swift passage that I’m using and then send students off to use similar techniques on another chunk from the text. Hmm. Maybe students are to become experts on certain terms, searching for their historical significance and then explaining those terms to the class as they come up in the reading. Hmm. The class could put together a kind of glossary on the references that Swift is making in his text. So the focus is mostly on research and how Swift uses exaggeration, understatement, and parody to make commentary on society.

If I go with that, I’ll need to make a list of possible terms for students to research and collect Web sites and references that they can consult as they do that research. I could probably use the Travelogue to move them through the sites that include details on the book’s background. Some of the terms would be easier to figure out than others, but it’s likely that a lot are basically defined in their textbooks. They could then go to the library and research the historical references in more detail.

Presentations would be spread through the reading of the book (not all done at the end). Whenever a term is encountered, the student who did the research on that item would provide the background and details. At the end, all students would be expected to piece together all of the ways that Swift satirizes society to draw conclusions about the overall message that the book makes to its readers.

There. That seems like a workable plan. See? Writing and thinking do work together :)