ENG4U Unit 6: The Machine Stops

Students read Forster's story of people who live alone in rooms, talk through glowing plates and come to worship the Machine, alongside Zamyatin's Tables of Hours. Then they turn the questions on today's media: how free apps make money, a scavenger hunt for persuasive design, the Algorithm Game, and checking AI-generated media with the SIFT method. A Day Without the Machine diary runs through the unit.

Assessment of learning: a counter-campaign media text (a public service ad, an app redesign or a short video) with a written rationale, and a pitch to a panel, with rubrics.

Lessons

1. Imagine a Small Room
2. The Air-Ship
3. The Mending Apparatus
4. The Machine Stops
5. We: The Straight Line
6. The Attention Economy
7. Design Tricks
8. The Algorithm Game
9. Spot the AI
10. Counter-Campaign Studio: Plan
11. Counter-Campaign Studio: Make
12. The Dystopia Pitch Panel

What you get

• A teacher lesson plan for every lesson: curriculum expectations, learning goals and success criteria, a timed sequence, differentiation, look-fors and answer guides
• Detailed slideshows (15 to 18 slides per lesson) with speaker notes on every slide: what to say, what to ask, what to look for and how long to spend, plus worked examples, model answers and answer-key slides
• Student handouts, organizers and exit tickets
• A 22-page Machine Reader with the full story, We excerpts and original media texts (an invented app, game cards and AI samples)
• Editable Word and PowerPoint files, plus PDFs
• A unit overview and the summative tasks and rubrics