Warning or prediction? Nineteen Eighty Four is the anchor text for a series of tasks that ask readers to compare the novel to the film as well as current events to those pictured in George Orwell's dystopian classic.

"Timid, scared, terrified." High school scholars examine words, their denotations and connotations, in a series of exercises that use lines from Shakespeare to explore figurative language and word relationships. Participants then...