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__1984__ Lesson Plans **Title of Lesson Plan Number 1:** **Verisimilitude in 1984** **What the students understand when they finish your lesson with you:** **a)** The ideas and concepts used to establish verisimilitude in 1984 **b)** Making connections with other books and movies that use verisimilitude. **c)** Definition and Understanding of verisimilitude **Main Standard you are achieving (the number and full description):**  **Materials Needed and Technology Used:**   **a)** Book **b)** Handout **c)** Thirteen Days DVD **d)** Computer **Opening Activity Description (What the students and you are doing):**  · Defining and understanding Verisimilitude.  **Middle/Main Activity Description (What the students and you are doing):**  · Filling out [|work sheet]: describing what makes good and bad Verisimilitude  · Finding and describing Verisimilitude in 1984  · Watch Thirteen Days DVD  · See how verisimilitude is used in Thirteen Days.  **Closing Activity Description (What the students and you are doing):**  · Describing the similarities and differences in the verisimilitude between Thirteen Days and 1984    **Links:**
 * · Listening B2: Listen skillfully to distinguish emotive and persuasive rhetoric**
 * According to this [|article], Big Brother (the government) is watching all of us.



__1984__ Lesson Plans **Title of Lesson Plan Number 2:** **Deception in 1984** **What the students understand when they finish your lesson with you:** **a)** What characteristics are used by characters in both movies and books to demonstrate deception? **b)** Why do people feel the need to deceive? **c)** Is the CIA similar to Big Brother with their sayings of "trust no one" and "nothing is what it seems."  **Main Standard you are achieving (the number and full description):**  __Speaking A2: Support, modify, or refute a position in small or large-group discussions__  **Materials Needed and Technology Used:**   **a)** Books **b)** Computer **c)** The Recruit DVD **d)** [|Handout]  **Opening Activity Description (What the students and you are doing):**  **1.** Go through a list of people who are universally trusted and not trusted, and discuss why they are or are not trusted.  **Middle/Main Activity Description (What the students and you are doing):**  **1. ** Talk about the deception in 1984 and who can or cannot be trusted in the novel.  **2. ** Discuss what details and characteristics Orwell encompasses to demonstrate who can or cannot be trusted.  **3. ** Show Clip from “The Recruit” a movie discussing the secrecy of the CIA and uses the CIA’s ideas of "trust no one" and "nothing is what it seems." **Closing Activity Description (What the students and you are doing):**   1. Discuss “The Recruit” and link the lying and deceptiveness to 1984 and the Government. Are they similar?            **Links:**

With tons of [|websites] and sources, what information can we actually trust?


__1984__ Lesson Plans **Title of Lesson Plan Number 3: Totalitarianism** **What the students understand when they finish your lesson with you:** **a)** Totalitariastic ideas and examples in current society and in history **b)** How Orwell developed a totalitariastic society **Main Standard you are achieving (the number and full description):** · __Speaking A2: Support, modify, or refute a position in small or large-group discussions__ **Materials Needed and Technology Used:** **a)** Computer **b)** [|Handout] **c)** Book **d)** Clip of Prison Break **Opening Activity Description (What the students and you are doing):** · Discuss the idea of Totalitarianism · How was it evident in 1984? **Middle/Main Activity Description (What the students and you are doing):** · Discuss examples of Totalitarianism government. · What is necessary for a Totalitarianism government to run? · Show clip from Prison Break of the “Company” running the inner doings of the government. **Closing Activity Description (What the students and you are doing):** · Discuss the similarities between the “Company” and Big Brother **Links:** This [|link]discusses the history of totalitariastic governments throughout history.

= **A Number to a Hero** =

**// Interview with World War II Veteran //**
Irving Margulis, an eighty-six year old [|World War II veteran], laid in his bed in the Kessler Rehabilitation Center after undergoing hip surgery. Despite fighting over sixty years ago, Mr. Margulis remembered every detail of the war: dates, generals, and battles. If not for the nurse interrupting the interview, he would have spoken about the war for hours. As he talked, you could look into his eyes and see: his vision, his memory, and the faces of fallen comrades flash in front of him.

“There was no question I was for the war,” explained Irving. “[|The Japanese attacked us] and we had no other choice.” Supporting the war and willing to fight in war is not the same. “I was fearful that they would find something that would allow me not to fight, Andrew, God’s honest truth,” Mr. Margulis adamantly declared through a truthful voice that said he was not just being politically correct.

Most people envision that the War was fought by the poor and the uneducated. However, Mr. Margulis was a college-educated Jewish boy from Brooklyn. Ironically, his college education, which was an extremely rare level of schooling for a soldier in his infantry unit, eventually led to the saving of his life. Private Margulis was in the “A” company of the [|383rd infantry regiment] of the [|96th infantry division] of the US army. The [|Colonel] knew from past experience with the Private, that he had a background in finance. “The Colonel asked me if I would help him out,” Irving quietly explained. “A rule of thumb in the army was to listen to whatever the colonel said; if he jumps off a building, you jump with him.”

“The Colonel reassigned me from the A Company and put me into the tax service in the Headquarters Company,” emphatically stated the veteran. He explained that the officers ate in their own mess hall, and had to pay for their own meals. However, unbalanced accounting books suggested that someone was stealing. This prompted the commanding officers to investigate the matter. “He asked me to reconcile the books and records and to get them up to date,” stated Mr. Margulis with pride, as he sat up in his bed. “Not only did I get out of A company, but I was also paid 75 dollars a month in addition to my regular stipend,” Irving exclaimed with a smirk.

The A company ended up being the first ones to storm the beaches of [|Okinawa] and other islands in the Pacific. “The A Company had 100 percent casualties,” somberly stated Irving. “That means all my friends were either [|killed or severely injured] for life.” Mr. Margulis started to perspire, and it was evident that he understood how lucky he was to be switched out of that company. Irving gravely said, “If I were not switched out of that company, you would not have a grandfather today.” It is easy to realize the severity of the war while listening to the old veteran. Often, the death toll is just a number, and does not mean much to us until we understand that people’s lives are actually being lost.

Adjusting to war is something you can never get used to. The conditions are unbearable during combat: blistering heat, pouring rain, sleeping with a puddle for a pillow. “People wouldn’t complain about things today if they knew what we went through in the war,” Irving affirmed.

Often people have skewed views regarding what a hero means. Is [|Alex Rodriguez] a hero because he can hit a baseball very far, or is a hero a soldier or firefighter who puts his or her life on the line every day to defend others. “I can’t say I was a hero by any stretch of the imagination,” responded Mr. Margulis. “I don’t want to make it out like I was a hero. I never killed anyone, but I was there.” Being there is all that was needed; Mr. Margulis is a hero in the eyes of Americans.


 * Videos**

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