Animal Farm Windmill Simulation
By Andrea Ziller
My 8th grade English class teamed up with STEAM teacher, Ms. Young, to build model windmills in conjunction with their reading of the allegorical novel, Animal Farm. Animal Farm tells the story of a group of farm animals who rebel against their human farmer, Mr. Jones, to form a society where all animals are equal, free, and happy. However, the rebellion is betrayed, and under the dictatorship of a pig named Napoleon, the farm ends up in a state as bad as it was before ousting Jones. In this activity, students were given access to a limited supply of resources and challenged to build a freestanding, motorized windmill while simulating a communist, democratic, or totalitarian government structure.
In the communist group, students were assigned to all agree on decisions and complete all tasks equally. What emerged, however, was one leader who took charge of the planning and execution of the windmill. Luckily for this group, their leader, Liam, was fair and listened to the ideas of most of his group mates.
The democratic group found success but realized that it slowed them down to vote on every decision and often bypassed this step in favor of efficiency. In the totalitarian group, one student, Spencer, was named dictator, with a consultant, Gardiner, and two workers, Ari and Jake. Despite his best efforts, Spencer was not able to control his group, and Gardiner and Jake led the charge to build the windmill according to their own ideas.
All in all, while the path to get there looked very different, all groups successfully constructed a functioning windmill! The following day, students participated in a reflection to connect their experiences to events in Animal Farm and its allegorical connections to the Russian Revolution.
