This article is in collaboration with Progeny Press, which offers literature guides for all grade levels.
Progeny Press has over 100 different literature guides to choose from across all grade levels. The Animal Farm Study Guide is designed to accompany Animal Farm, by George Orwel. It is for students in 9th-12th grades who prefer learning through reading and writing.
The Animal Farm Study Guide literature guide comes in downloadable PDF format, and to complete it, students need a copy of the book, a dictionary, a thesaurus, and a Bible. Given that this is a classic book, getting a physical copy should be easy, and most libraries will have an electronic copy as well.
About the Literature Guide
The literature guide can be used flexibly and is easy to incorporate into your homeschool day. If used as a singular adventure—a focused unit study—the literature guide takes about a week to complete. When used as part of the regular school year, this study guide should take about ten weeks.
The study guides from Progeny Press work as a stand-alone English/language arts curriculum. Incorporating the literature guides into existing curricula and programs is easy. One high school study guide is equivalent to 1/4 year of literature credit. The completion of four study guides counts as a full year of language arts. Other study guides available at the high school level include: The Red Badge of Courage, The Yearling, Heart of Darkness, Jane Eyre, Hamlet, Out of the Silent Planet, To Kill a Mockingbird, A Day No Pigs Would Die, The Great Gatsby, and A Tale of Two Cities.
What’s Included
Progeny Press literature guides focus on the quality of answers, rather than providing busywork for students and emphasizing the amount of work done. The Animal Farm guide opens with introductory elements, a synopsis, information about the author, and pre-reading activities. These activities are designed to help set the scene for the study and help the student picture the scene. Given the allegorical nature of the story, the background information also focuses on Stalin and multiple systems of economics and government.
Each section of the guide covers multiple chapters, including these elements:
- Vocabulary: This covers vocabulary words and basic dictionary skills. Various tasks are assigned for learning the new words.
- Questions: This section consists of straightforward questions about the events in the story to test reading comprehension.
- Thinking about the Story: This section requires the student to pay attention to the other details of the story. These questions include evaluating a character’s motive, making inferences about events to come, and discussing the conflict in the story.
- Dig Deeper: In this section, Bible verses and principles are brought into the study. The verses shared help students to think more deeply about the characters and conflict in the novel. They lead them to make value judgements about the content of the book.
- Optional Activities: This section contains ideas like making a poster, having a class discussion, doing further research, and learning more about the Russian Revolution.
Features and Benefits of the Literature Guide
The study guide challenges and encourages high school students to think about the covered concepts, how they have applied in history, and how they apply to the world at large. The “Dig Deeper” section is valuable for parents who want their students to read good fiction, as well as who want to incorporate discussions about their own views on morality and character into the context of the book.
The literature guides are digitally interactive, allowing students to work independently and type their answers directly into the PDF, allowing parents to forgo printing every page. For matching sections, students can use a dropdown menu to answer. Multiple choice questions have a checkbox, and short answer questions have an area to type text. The literature guides also come with a separate answer key for quick and easy grading by parents.
Check out all of the literature guides from Progeny Press!
HomeschoolingFinds.com Author
Yvie is a veteran homeschool mom and teacher at Sparks Academy who enjoys helping other families on their homeschool journey. When not teaching, counseling, or managing educational projects, she enjoys reading, spending time in her garden, and traveling the country with her boys.