SOURCE: Knapp, John V. “Creative Reasoning in the Interactive Classroom: Experiential Exercises for Teaching George Orwell's Animal Farm.” College Literature 23, no. 2 (June 1996): 143-56.

In the following essay, Knapp discusses his methods for teaching Animal Farm.

                                    Simplification is vexation,                                              Work sheets are as bad;  Then the old ennui just crushes me,                          And practice drives me mad!                                  So give me argumentation!                                  More give and take agrees,                                  Helps me in my education,                          Then Orwell seems a breeze. 

(“The Bald-headed Bard” 1996)

Most of us enjoy a change now and then, whether to a different brand of ice cream or to a method by which we teach the “classic” works of literature. One older method, lecturing, has well-known limitations, especially for younger students and those not especially motivated to do close readings of literary texts. While lecturing works in some places and for some students, those of us who teach literature are always...