First and fourth periods spent some time looking at the rubric for the extensive Lord of the Flies project and then worked in pairs to evaluate a less-than-perfect model selection:

As the boys stranded, and the littleuns completely dependent upon the older children for all their physiological needs, Jack could easily use knowledge of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to manipulate the situation and wrest control from Ralph. Most basically, Jack and his choir boys supply all the meat during their pig hunts, and the littleuns are going to soon get tired of eating just the scraps of fruit they might find on their own. Jack could simply retreat to another part of the island, stop providing food for all the others, and wait for everyone to search him out. At that point, he would simply need to say, “If you want to eat, you’ll stay with me; if you don’t, you’ll go back to Ralph.” In addition, Jack could apply Maslow’s hierarchy by fulfilling the higher level needs with the boys who come along with them. Treating the littleuns like family, he could win their trust and devotion. In such a case, even if he were to be unable to bring food for the group—if, for example, they were unable to find pigs for several days—he would have their devotion to ensure his power until he could find food. Indeed, he might even be able to resort to feeding meat to the littleuns on an increasingly infrequent schedule as he fulfills other, higher needs as well. This would make sure he and his hunters don’t exhaust the island’s supply of swine too early, which would threaten his power in the end. With their inability to care for themsevles, the littleuns are indeed susceptible to manipulation through the application of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

The multiple writing workshops begin now, with the first selection is due for submission on Wednesday of this week.

Second and seventh periods began the concluding project for Flowers for Algernon by having a Socratic Seminar about whether or not the operation on Charlie Gordon was fair.

Homework

• English I Honors: 
  • read chapters three and four of Lord of the Flies for tomorrow;
  • complete the writing assignment for chapters one and two (see the Moodle site for details) by Wednesday evening;
  • complete the end-of-quarter self-evaluations.