Welcome to my third blog post! In our second blog post, Kaitlynn and I explained how we will be discussing F. Scott Fitzgeralds, The Great Gatsby. We are aiming to gear our lesson plan towards middle and high school students. We chose this age group because there is so much important history that was occuring at the time period of which The Great Gatsby takes place in. The roaring twenties was such an important time in American history and one that I have learned about in depth, throughout my years of schooling. The Great Gatsby is a book gearned towards older students because it holds so many hidden meanings and details throughout the book. We will teach these important details by assigning readings every week for their homework. At the end of the book, we will watch the movie from start to finish. This will help those who are more visual learners understand the book. Once a week, we will have a quick reading quiz to make sure the students are reading the book too, and not just relying on the movie. 

To me, some of the most important themes in The Great Gatsby are the American Dream, money, and social class. The clash between “old money” and “new money” manifests itself in the novel’s symbolic geography. There is the idea of the East Egg and West Egg. East Egg meant that those who lived there had “Old Money,” meaning, they have been wealthy for generations. West Egg is where people with New Money lived, therefore, they are currently working for their fortune. This idea is complex and a bit hard to understand at times so we want to make sure the students understand this. On top of this we will also be connecting the book to Gardeners components of intelligences. Interpersonal, intrapersonal and linguistics are all used throughout the book, and we will be explaining when these intelligences are present and why they are important. We also plan on explaining how they all connect to eachother. 

To teach this in class we will be using powerpoint presentations disucussing the main themes of the book, and important components. The slides will back up the information that we are relaying to the students. At the end of each powerpoint, we will also play a little clip from the movie to wrap it up. We are doing this to ensure that the students get a deeper meaning on how the text should be interpreted and fully understand it. Since we will have reading homeworks, quizzes on what the students have read, powerpoints, and movie clips, the students should have everything they need to fully understand the text. If anyone is struggling with the reading quizzes, we will help give them strategies on how to read the text more in depth and take in even little details. 

Annotated Bibliography

1. “The Great Gatsby.” NEA, 6 June 2018,

http://www.neabigread.org/books/greatgatsby

I liked this source a lot because it gives some guidelines on how to break down reading the book. It summarizes what the book is about as a whole and then gives an introduction to the book as well. It also gives a character list with some background on each character. This website could help a student to know a little bit more about what charcters they are reading about if they start mixing them up. 

2. “Free Teaching Guide: The Great Gatsby.” Prestwick House, www.prestwickhouse.com/blog/post/2019/04/how-to-teach-the-great-gatsby.

This website was extremely helpful for me because it discussed key facts about the book, provided a summary, and gave some background as well. This website is helpful for a teacher because it provides great information that can be taught and also more information so the teacher fully understands it themselves. 

3. “Free Teaching Guide: The Great Gatsby.” Prestwick House, http://www.prestwickhouse.com/blog/post/2019/04/how-to-teach-the-great-gatsby.

This article was another one I found on the website I was on before. This one was really great because it gave so much background information on the time period that The Great Gatsby took place in. It was literally called “Everything you need to know: Gatsby Era.” So this website was full of great information on the time period and relating it back to the book. Relating it back to the book was very helpful because it helped me to put the peices together and fully understand it.