Teaching the hunger games in college

Discuss and write about the atmosphere in The Hunger Games. How does Collins set the tone and feel of District 12 and life there? Plot Create a plot diagram for the novel. Use chapter questions to ensure comprehension. Use discussion questions to ensure students get the more subtle elements of the story. Character Students create a character chart with descriptions of important characters in The Hunger Games. Create music playlists for characters from The Hunger Games. Include music that they might like and that represents aspects of their personality.

Create a facebook page for one of the important characters from The Hunger Games. Create a twitter feed for one of the characters with tweets from various points in the story. Write a character sketch for one of the important characters. Theme Create a theme collage with images and symbols representing one of the central messages in the text.

Write theme statements for the novel. Write a post-card story that conveys a theme similar to one from The Hunger Games. I do appreciate your comments. Have a great day. Great blog! I was wondering where all the URL referrals were coming from! Thank you for the excellent resource. I am always interested in engaging ideas for the classroom. My daughter read the Hunger Games and in turn got me hooked on the series. We saw the movie together and discussed the elements of both.

I am enjoying your blog. You daughter is fortunate to have an engaging teacher. Thanks for sharing and thanks for following Surviving to Thriving. We appreciate your comments. Those were the teachers I loved the most! Thank you for the commments. The combination of literature and social studies is a great way to engage student interest.

Glad to hear you had awesome teachers. Linda C. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Google account.

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Email Address:. Sign me up! We easily trade six of the fish for good bread, the other two for salt. Greasy Sae, the bony old woman who sells bowls of hot soup from a large kettle, takes half the greens off our hands in exchange for a couple of chunks of paraffin. We might do a tad better elsewhere, but we make an effort to keep on good terms with Greasy Sae.

No one in the Seam would turn up their nose at a good leg of wild dog, but the Peacekeepers who come to the Hob can afford to be a little choosier. She just keeps to herself. Like me. Since neither of us really has a group of friends, we seem to end up together a lot at school. Eating lunch, sitting next to each other at assemblies, partnering for sports activities. We rarely talk, which suits us both just fine.

Today her drab school outfit has been replaced by an expensive white dress, and her blonde hair is done up with a pink ribbon. Reaping clothes. It is a pretty dress, but she would never be wearing it ordinarily. She presses her lips together and then smiles. Does she mean it? Or is she messing with him? His eyes land on a small, circular pin that adorns her dress. Real gold.

Beautifully crafted. It could keep a family in bread for months. Five entries? I had six when I was just twelve years old. She puts the money for the berries in my hand. We walk toward the Seam in silence. The reaping system is unfair, with the poor getting the worst of it. You become eligible for the reaping the day you turn twelve.

That year, your name is entered once. At thirteen, twice. And so on and so on until you reach the age of eighteen, the final year of eligibility, when your name goes into the pool seven times. Say you are poor and starving as we were. You can opt to add your name more times in exchange for tesserae.

You may do this for each of your family members as well. So, at the age of twelve, I had my name entered four times. Once, because I had to, and three times for tesserae for grain and oil for myself, Prim, and my mother. In fact, every year I have needed to do this. And the entries are cumulative. So now, at the age of sixteen, my name will be in the reaping twenty times. Gale, who is eighteen and has been either helping or single-handedly feeding a family of five for seven years, will have his name in forty-two times.

You can see why someone like Madge, who has never been at risk of needing a tessera, can set him off. The chance of her name being drawn is very slim compared to those of us who live in the Seam. Not impossible, but slim.

Gale knows his anger at Madge is misdirected. A way to plant hatred between the starving workers of the Seam and those who can generally count on supper and thereby ensure we will never trust one another.

His rages seem pointless to me, although I never say so. But what good is yelling about the Capitol in the middle of the woods? In fact, it scares off the nearby game. I let him yell though. Better he does it in the woods than in the district. Gale and I divide our spoils, leaving two fish, a couple of loaves of good bread, greens, a quart of strawberries, salt, paraffin, and a bit of money for each.

At home, I find my mother and sister are ready to go. My mother wears a fine dress from her apothecary days. Prim is in my first reaping outfit, a skirt and ruffled blouse. A tub of warm water waits for me. I scrub off the dirt and sweat from the woods and even wash my hair. To my surprise, my mother has laid out one of her own lovely dresses for me.

A soft blue thing with matching shoes. And this is something special. Her clothes from her past are very precious to her. I let her towel-dry it and braid it up on my head. I can hardly recognize myself in the cracked mirror that leans against the wall. I hug her, because I know these next few hours will be terrible for her. Her first reaping. That the unthinkable might happen.

I notice her blouse has pulled out of her skirt in the back again and force myself to stay calm. The kind only Prim can draw out of me. The fish and greens are already cooking in a stew, but that will be for supper. This evening, officials will come around and check to see if this is the case. The camera crews, perched like buzzards on rooftops, only add to the effect.

People file in silently and sign in. The reaping is a good opportunity for the Capitol to keep tabs on the population as well. Twelve- through eighteen-year-olds are herded into roped areas marked off by ages, the oldest in the front, the young ones, like Prim, toward the back.

But there are others, too, who have no one they love at stake, or who no longer care, who slip among the crowd, taking bets on the two kids whose names will be drawn. Most refuse dealing with the racketeers but carefully, carefully.

I could be shot on a daily basis for hunting, but the appetites of those in charge protect me. Not everyone can claim the same. Anyway, Gale and I agree that if we have to choose between dying of hunger and a bullet in the head, the bullet would be much quicker. The space gets tighter, more claustrophobic as people arrive.

I find myself standing in a clump of sixteens from the Seam. We all exchange terse nods then focus our attention on the temporary stage that is set up before the Justice Building. It holds three chairs, a podium, and two large glass balls, one for the boys and one for the girls.

Twenty of them have Katniss Everdeen written on them in careful handwriting. They murmur to each other and then look with concern at the empty seat.