I love teaching Suzan Collins’ The Hunger Games. It was literally my
dream unit when I was in undergrad, and I am so blessed that I got to
teach it to two of my classes my first year teaching. This book is a
story that everyone should read. Not only is it entertaining and
makes kids excited about reading, but it is smart! I think I could
create a whole college course on the social commentary that Collins
brings to the table in this dystopian tale. However, since social
commentary is a bit over my struggling reader’s heads, ( I teach the
H.Games to my reading fundamentals classes) I came up with a few
lessons to bring it to there level, and slowly introduced the more
complex aspects of this novel.
One of my kid’s favorite activities that we did with The Hunger
Games, was keep track of the death toll of the tributes during the
games. As we read chapter by chapter, Katniss lets the reader know
which tributes are killed. I made a district line up with little boy
and girl tribute figure below each district, and when someone is
killed, we cross them off with a big red ex. Students begged to be
the ones to keep our death list up to date. This may seem a little
morbid, but it was a great tool to help my readers visualize which
characters were left, and it gave them a concrete look at the
magnitude of exactly how many children were dying in this book.
(that’s the whole point of the book! ) It’s easy to read in the first
chapter of the games that 11 tributes are dead. But when you
physically cross them off a list one by one, it really hits home. The
extent of the brutality of the Capitol, and of these Games, is
revealed in front of your student’s eyes. It’s also a great way to
keep track of the plot. I had students record which chapters tributes
died in so we could easily find key parts of the story when
discussing.
Overall this was a great tool and an exciting way to get kids involved
with the story. I have pictures attached of our District line up. I
used the district crests from the Hunger Games movie site and simply
drew blue and pink stick figures under each crest to signify the boy
and girl tribute from each district. As we learned character’s names
the class added those as well.
dream unit when I was in undergrad, and I am so blessed that I got to
teach it to two of my classes my first year teaching. This book is a
story that everyone should read. Not only is it entertaining and
makes kids excited about reading, but it is smart! I think I could
create a whole college course on the social commentary that Collins
brings to the table in this dystopian tale. However, since social
commentary is a bit over my struggling reader’s heads, ( I teach the
H.Games to my reading fundamentals classes) I came up with a few
lessons to bring it to there level, and slowly introduced the more
complex aspects of this novel.
One of my kid’s favorite activities that we did with The Hunger
Games, was keep track of the death toll of the tributes during the
games. As we read chapter by chapter, Katniss lets the reader know
which tributes are killed. I made a district line up with little boy
and girl tribute figure below each district, and when someone is
killed, we cross them off with a big red ex. Students begged to be
the ones to keep our death list up to date. This may seem a little
morbid, but it was a great tool to help my readers visualize which
characters were left, and it gave them a concrete look at the
magnitude of exactly how many children were dying in this book.
(that’s the whole point of the book! ) It’s easy to read in the first
chapter of the games that 11 tributes are dead. But when you
physically cross them off a list one by one, it really hits home. The
extent of the brutality of the Capitol, and of these Games, is
revealed in front of your student’s eyes. It’s also a great way to
keep track of the plot. I had students record which chapters tributes
died in so we could easily find key parts of the story when
discussing.
Overall this was a great tool and an exciting way to get kids involved
with the story. I have pictures attached of our District line up. I
used the district crests from the Hunger Games movie site and simply
drew blue and pink stick figures under each crest to signify the boy
and girl tribute from each district. As we learned character’s names
the class added those as well.