Approaching the Context of A Christmas Carol

Click on the link above to access a worksheet on the context of A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens. It’s based around four key areas and there are eight questions in total. Each question has a hyperlink that will take students to a decent website that contains the information they need; this will hopefully have the effect of making the process more efficient and worthwhile. As you can see from the snip below, I’ve also included some broad contextual information to ‘frame’ each of the areas and provide a ‘way in’ before students begin.

The idea is for students to answer the questions by making at least two bullet-points and then retrieving two relevant quotations. Nothing more complicated than that. For example, a typical response to question one might be:

• Dickens worked in a ‘blacking factory’ as a child
• Dickens’ father was put into a debtors’ prison
• ‘he spent 10 hours a day pasting labels onto pots of shoe polish for 6 shillings a week’
• ‘he was abruptly plunged into poverty in 1822’

After students have completed the questions and their notes have been checked (etc.), click here to access a worksheet that will help to test their knowledge of the fundamentals in a future lesson.

There are fifteen mixed questions that should be fairly easy to provide feedback on. Some focus on passages from three of the websites used for the research tasks, others focus on factual knowledge and vocabulary.

Hope the stuff’s helpful. Feedback always appreciated –

Hope it’s useful –

Doug

hello@douglaswise.co.uk