Jonathan Swift Teacher Prep

PART A

1.) Questions:
a. Does he want to take over their land?
b. What is their understanding of one another?
c. Is he calm because he is scared or is there another reason?
d. Do they sort of understand one another without exchanging the same language?


2.) Excerpts:
Page 653
- “I thought it the most prudent method to lie still, and my design was to continue so till night, when, my left hand being already loose, I could easily free myself…:”
I would like to discuss what he means in this part of the excerpt. He says his method is to lie still all day and then just wait to see what else they will do because he could easily free himself if he wanted.

Pages 654-655
- They speak different languages; they obviously are not the same size; they are trying to understand why he is there and he has his own reason, just not sure, what it is. Would like to know what the class thinks.

Page 655
- “But the remembrance of what I had felt, which probably might not be the worst they could do, and the promise of honor I made them, for so I interpreted my submissive behavior, soon drove out those imaginations. Besides, I now considered myself as bound by the laws of hospitality to a people who had treated me with so much expense and magnificence.”
So he is calm because of his promise of honor. He could easily unbind himself but he will not.

Page 656
-“And producing his credentials under the Signet Royal, which he applied close to my eyes, spoke about ten minutes, without any signs of anger, but with a kind of determinate resolution; often pointing forward, which, as I afterward found, was toward the capital city, about half a mile distant, whither it was agreed by his Majesty in council that I must be conveyed. I answered in few words, but to no purpose, and made a sign with my hand that was loose, putting it to the other (but over his Excellency’s head for fear of hurting him or his train) and then to my own head and body, to signify that I desired my liberty. It appeared that he understood me well enough, for he shook his head by way of disapprobation, and held his hand in a posture to show that I must be carried as a prisoner.”
This excerpt shows that with a simple nod or tone of voice, or even actions, such as Gulliver’s passive posture, can signify appropriate communication between people.


3.) Prediction:
The class may find it hard to know exactly what the understanding is between one another because they attack him first off, signaling dislike probably out of fear, then they feed him and give him something to drink, which of course must give a sign of trust or like in their new prisoner.

PART B

4.) The teacher group:
Discussed different questions we chose, gave our answers and then started discussing some ways to present our ideas to the class. The good: interesting to see our questions were somewhat similar. That means other classmates might have the same, so it’s probably a good question to ask. The bad: Did not really know how to effectively propose our ideas, but we tried our best. J I learned that teaching is harder than it looks! However, if you are a good teacher it can be done. Really, you just have to ask yourself questions that you think the class would be interested in thinking about or ask something that you know they would have difficulty answering so you could discuss it more.

PART C

5.) Working with other teacher groups:
We have decided to present using a large poster. We are going to write our questions on there and below them, list some reference pages so they could easily access the answers. We chose to just write only the questions we formulated on the poster because we would like to keep our predictions to ourselves to see if the groups we are teaching actually had the same difficulties that we have hypothesized. While asking them the questions we have written down, we are also going to ask questions to help get their minds working in the right direction, possibly leading them to an answer that we have or one that we could discover together.