A Clockwork Orange Lesson Plan

Understanding Nadsat

Kind of Activity:

Group Work

Objective:

Students will collaborate to sharpen their understanding of Burgess's invented dialect

Structure:

Divide students into pairs or groups of three, and assign each small group a set of two paragraphs from Chapter 1. (Each group should have different paragraphs.) Ask them to conduct a close reading of the paragraphs, meaning they read it at least three times, annotating, noticing patterns, and asking questions. Ask them, as they read, to identify words they don't understand. On a second or third read, they should see if they can use context clues to help them understand some of those unknown words.

When all groups...