OF MICE AND MEN RESOURCES BOOK

Are you a hard-pressed English teacher preparing lesson plans for Of Mice and Men? The OF MICE AND MEN RESOURCES BOOK contains a range of material – photographs (mostly from the 1930s), historic printed materials, and original posters - which can be used to help students understand the lives of the characters in Of Mice and Men, and stimulate classroom discussion about Steinbeck’s main ideas and themes.

Students and parents may also be interested in buying the resource book themselves, as an aid to understanding the characters and themes in Of Mice and Men.

The resources are grouped by topic, and each group is accompanied by an explanatory commentary.

Images help to reinforce understanding of a text. For example, when students have seen a photograph of an ice cream parlor in a small American town with an entrance marked “For White Ladies Only”, they will have a stronger sense of the reality of racial segregation. Similarly, when they have been able to see the face of a real “bindle stiff”, or seen photographs of workers in a 1930s bunk house, they will have a more accurate and vivid picture of what it was like to be a migrant worker.

Documents and posters, such as an extract from a 1930s Californian pamphlet about the treatment of the “feebleminded”, or a newspaper report about lynching, will also help students to understand the society which Steinbeck describes in Of Mice and Men.

The examiners expect students to know and comment on the historical, social and cultural context of a text. This resources book provides a great way to discover the background to Of Mice and Men.

Examiners’ reports from each of the main examining boards, AQA, Edexcel and OCR, emphasise the importance of students being able to respond personally to the text. The use of original photographs and other materials will help to enhance their ability to understand the lives and feelings of the characters in Of Mice and Men.