Anne Of Green Gables: Teaching Children's Literature

Anne Of Green Gables lesson plan teaches elementary students to understand and appreciate the timeless characteristics of literature

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Anne Of Green Gables in the classroom

(Published in Directory : Language Arts : Children's Literature)

While trying to help my sixth graders appreciate some good literature, I tried to teach them that one of the characteristics of classic art of any form is that it is timeless. That is, the themes are relevant today as well as in the past. The themes often relate to our basic needs as humans.

One assignment that I used was to have the children watch the video Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Even if children have seen the video or read the book, they will enjoy doing so again.

What I asked them to do was watch for feelings, ideas, or needs that Anne experienced that children today might also experience and how they might react similarly or differently from Anne. Students were to keep a list for discussion and for a later writing assignment. The first setting, we watched the video for about half an hour and then stopped to discuss what we had seen so that students would see what I was looking for. Some of the topics for discussion that students came up with were:

Homelessness
Feelings of not being wanted
Being the new kid on the block
Child labor
Peer Pressure
Having goals and dreams
Being successful
Wanting to belong to the crowd
Pride in who we are
Feelings of being physically unattractive
Having a best friend

There are many other themes which children of different ages might notice. After discussion and sharing of different themes, children could be asked to write about 3 or 4 of the ones they like best. The number and the length of the assignment should be determined by the age and ability of the student. This assignment could be used with many different books.

At the time I used this, we also studied Canada and Mexico in the sixth grade social studies curriculum. This made a nice way to integrate the language arts and social studies curricula.

About the Author

Name: Margaret Twitchell

Bio: I am a retired elementary school teacher who lives in Oxford, Maine

Recommended Resources

Complete Anne of Green Gables
Anne of Green Gables DVD
Anne - Continuing Story
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shelley wrote on Mar 11, 2005	quote options
I'm currently reading Kenzaburo Oe's story Ahgwee The Sky Monster, which is about a man who goes mad after killing his baby son because he thought he had a birth defect. The interesting thing is that Oe has a son with a severe birth defect, so if anyone could understand the character in the story, it would be the author. Perhaps that's what he means; his own story is made more powerful by the fact that he has modeled his character after himself to some extent. All of which has nothing to do with Anne Of Green Gables, except to make me wonder if Montgomery's childhood was at all like Anne's? Now that I think about it, Ingalls (Little House On The Prairie) and Alcott (Little Women) did the same thing, right? Modelled their characters/stories after their own life experiences?
Douglas Twitchell wrote on Mar 11, 2005	quote options
wow...from Anne to Aghwee in one short jump! I just started reading "The Four Feathers" by A. E. W. Mason, and in the introduction, it talks about how Mason, like Kipling, has somewhat fallen out of favor, because he writes without rancor about an age of imperialism which we now shake our heads at. But the introduction makes this interesting comment: "The second act of literature, however, is that a work of art can come to have a life distinct from its context." In other words, even though we have come to disapprove of certain aspects of the culture (context) from which the author wrote, we still find value in the reading. Which is what Oe (and the author of the article) are saying. Though none of us experience life as Anne did, certain aspects of her story transcend the "context" of her time and place.
Douglas Twitchell wrote on Mar 17, 2005	quote options
Quote Now that I think about it, Ingalls (Little House On The Prairie) and Alcott (Little Women) did the same thing, right? Modelled their characters/stories after their own life experiences? I just thought of another one. The Great Brain by John D. Fitzgerald. It was written based on his experiences with his older brother Tom, growing up in small town Utah.

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