"Patrick Mullin

Ninth Grade; English; Close-Reading of The Great Gatsby; 15-20 Minutes

 

Big Idea (major understanding): F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby most pointedly conveys the American dream as a national ethos of the modernist movement through the contexts of themes and symbols in the novel, Fitzgerald equally working to describe the corruption of the American dream in its excessiveness and exclusion of other identities of the time.

 

National or Pennsylvania State Standard (from PDE SAS) addressed in this lesson:

English and Language Arts-CC.1.3.9–10. A Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze in detail its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shapedand refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text.

 

Essential  Questions  (1-2  EQs):

          I. How does Fitzgerald use themes and symbolism to accomplish his purpose of describing corruption in the American

          dream in the text?

 

Learning Target: (AB) Students will read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby to contextualize the American dream, through Fitzgerald’s symbol of the green light, for its national ethos, representing an aspiration/interest (for example perceived financial opportunity, religious freedom, etc.) of individuals to become American/Americanized (C) with evidence of the aspiration/interest from the texts by identifying the meanings of the symbol and close-reading passages that describe it (D) to interpret how contextualization is achieved and interpret it through its application of the green light.

 

Specific Vocabulary Taught:

          All Students: Modernism/Modernist movement.

          Some Students: the American Dream, the Roaring Twenties, Motif, and Symbolism.

          Few Students: Context/Contextualization, Corruption, Exclusion, and Interpret/Interpretation.

 

Instructional Materials: The PowerPoint, the PowerPoint’s digital copies of The Great Gatsby passages and related and unrelated visuals, the PowerPoint’s link to the video, and the shared Google Doc that will contain the entry ticket (anticipatory guide), activity, and exit ticket.

 

Video that portrays the green light symbol: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1-XFXX8rU4.

 

Procedure:

A. Introduction: The objective of this lesson is to define and understand the American dream in the context of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s modernist text The Great Gatsby and how the text describes the corruption of the American dream as a space of excessiveness and exclusion. Students will identify the terminology, themes, and symbols relevant to understanding the American dream.

 

B. Motivation: The motivation for students to be in the lesson and remain engaged in by first contextualizing the text’s themes and motifs to the historical setting, the Roaring Twenties. Students will be encouraged to contextualize the text by investigating historical documents and visuals of the era to understand how the text describes the corruption of the American dream.

           Students will also be able to contextualize the American dream and text, The Great Gatsby, to their own worldviews. They will have space to be vulnerable in their discussions by sharing their prior and personal knowledge of their family’s racial, ethnic, or cultural background and stories from the Roaring Twenties. From their prior and personal knowledge, the terminology, literary theme, and symbols become more easily identifiable.

 

C. Lesson Development: The lesson will begin with students being shown the big idea and essential question so that they may identify the progression of the lesson and its goals. Students will then be presented with an anticipation guide that asks them: Are the challenges to become wealthy and rise into the upper-class society worth it? Yes or no? And why? They will then independently write their answers in boxes below the question. They will then share their answers aloud.

           I will continue by presenting the PowerPoint and first define the American dream, as a national literary ethos in literature, contextualized in this lesson through F. Scott Fitzgerald’s text The Great Gatsby. This slide on the PowerPoint will also provide examples of the American dream, including ideas such as religious freedom and opportunity for economic prosperity. It will continue with additional slides that describe the corruption of the American dream, in how it worked to equally and perhaps more importantly exclude peoples from fulfilling their desired freedoms. These slides will encompass the diversity of classism against peoples. Students will then be invited to contextualize the American dream’s corruption to their own knowledge of history, such as the modernist movement and the Roaring Twenties, or their families’ stories and how their families were affected by the American dream.

           This question works to ask students to think about their knowledge of the American dream’s corruption by contextualizing it to their prior knowledge. This prior knowledge will offer the students to describe their pre-exposure, which could be, as described above, historical or personal such as within their family. From this point in the lesson, I will summarize an introduction to the text. These students are familiar with the text, The Great Gatsby, which will support this lesson moving forward. For this reason, I will immediately continue by introducing students to the symbol of the green light in the text. The PowerPoint will work to describe it and how it appears in the text in relation to representing the American dream. After this slide, I will show a video of the green light that is a clip from the film.

          Then the PowerPoint will show three passages from the text that concern the green light. I will read these passages aloud and students will be instructed to follow along my reading. They will then be asked about how Fitzgerald uses this symbol to relate to the symbol. Students will then be instructed to independently create symbol report cards that evaluate it, what it represents, and how it symbolizes the American dream. They will be instructed, in their symbol report card, to choose one of the passages or sentence from the passages that they find describes their evaluation best. They will also be instructed to correctly cite their passages. The final step of their symbol report card is to give an A through F- grade that assesses, in their opinion, how successful or unsuccessful the symbol of the green light is in representing the American dream’s corruption.

          Students will then present their report cards aloud. They will then discuss their evaluations and look for similarities and differences in contextualizing how successful or unsuccessful they find it to be. Students will be told that they can change their grades at any time during this discussion. When this discussion is completed, we will return to the PowerPoint with a final slide that covers the most important ideas from the lesson. Students will have the anticipation guide in front of them and will be asked if any of their answers have changed. They will explore this question until they find that it has been completed and the lesson will end.

 

Specific Strategies for Students for Diverse Learners

 

Universally designed strategies (for all children): The first universally designed strategy available for students is that the PowerPoint will begin by covering definitions and then continue by summarizing the text so that they have necessary information before moving forward to explore both. The PowerPoint itself will be clearly legible so that students can identify the information. I will also read the writing aloud and describe pictures when necessary.

           Additionally, students will be provided with a video that portrays the motif of the green light

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1-XFXX8rU4). There are opportunities for independent work and group work. These options will allow a diverse group of learners to be served. These opportunities allow students to incorporate and discuss in groups their prior knowledges, including the American dream, the Roaring Twenties, and The Great Gatsby, both historically and personally.

 

Differentiation (specific strategies for specific students for this particular lesson): I will apply knowledge about my students to better their learning by using an intersectional worldview in the first part of the lesson when we contextualize the setting. I will include historical documents and visuals that represent different racial, ethnic, and cultural groups during the Roaring Twenties, as well as genders and sexual identities. I will include these groups of people in both documents and visuals that portray the privileged and the underprivileged. Additionally, I will join in the conversations of the groups of students who need the most assistance during the portions of class when students are discussing amongst themselves and join in the small groups of students who need the most assistance when they are creating their report cards.

 

Summary/Closure: The lesson seeks to define the American dream in the context of  The Great Gatsby. Context is built by understanding the setting of the text from historical documents and visuals. It works to interpret the corruption of its worldview through the knowledge of its terminology, themes, and symbols. These symbols are evaluated for how they represent corruption, meaning students must understand terms, themes, and symbols and how they represent corruption.

 

 

Assessment: I will assess students for their participation, which will be graded through a mixture of verbal and spoken participation, ranging from that shared during class to that shared only during their small group conversations, and written participation in the anticipation guide. Written participation in the anticipation guide will be graded for its accuracy and ability to interpret the text. Additionally, students will be graded for their report cards, which will be an assessment. Grading may be modified to support more equitable evaluations of individual students’ works, including participation and assessment."