Jonathan Swift Teacher Prep Work

a) Q-What was the writers intent with writing this piece?
A-Swift includes a lot of satire about the qualifications of officeholders and hierarchy and also about the size of the Lilliputians. He mentions that "five or six of those candidates petition the Emperor to entertain his Majesty and the court with a dance on the rope, and whoever jumps the highest without falling, succeeds in the office." He also compares the size of the Lilliputians to ignorance.

Q-Is the size of Lilliputians symbolize something more then just a physical characteristic?
A-I think Swift brings up the argument of whether physical power or moral power should be the governing factor of an hierarchy.

Q-Do the names of the two colonies and what the Lilliputians say to Gulliver have any significance?
A-It's easy to see that the name of the Lilliputians has somewhat a version of the word "little" in it. Other than that the question still stands of whether the words actually meant something. This is something that only Swift may know.

Q-Does his satire about hierarchy and the qualifications for officeholders have any links to our system of politics today?
A- Swift seems to use his satire about the qualifications for office and hierarchy to show the corruption of politics in his time. This could very well apply to our lives today and our system of politics.

b)I think that working in groups is always beneficial. It gives more than just one perspective for the text and it helps see all sides of it. There is a lot to learn when you're sharing opinions and points of views with others. I liked the time each person put into teaching their classmates about the text because it made it easier to understand what they meant instead of them just making a statement. Nonetheless, I found this a very hard piece to analyze. At first I didn't see the meaning behind it but with the help of my group i got much farther into analyzing the text. So in the end, this was the perfect piece to work in a group with and do the teaching activity because it was so hard to interpret, in my eyes.

c)I saw that it was very beneficial to ask questions when working in a group even if you were in the teacher position. At first, I thought it didn't make sense for me as the teacher to ask my students questions but sometimes not only can you learn something from this but the people answering your questions could be approached with a new idea and perspective. Other than this small change, I will continue to ork as before.