Hosting Non-Violent Hunger Games Activities, Part 2

Previously, I blogged about competitive activities for your students that stay true to the theme of non-violence in The Hunger Games Trilogy. In this post, I'd like to share how I have facilitated our class activities.

For several years I have hosted a Class Reaping and Training challenge. We reap every student in the class for the positions of Tributes, Mentors, Escorts, and Stylists for each District. Those who were not reaped become the Gamemakers. This is done after we complete chapter two (or three).

The Groups
The Gamemakers form their own group and they are in charge of planning, creating, and facilitating the training stations, and scoring the tributes during the challenges.

The other students are grouped by District. They work together to create a marketing campaign for their tribute. They come up with slogans, outfits, tokens, posters, and 30-second ads to try to gain sponsorship for their District Tributes.

How Scores Are Determined
The Tributes (and their team) have three categories for scoring: Intelligence, Sponsorship, and Physical Skills.

Intelligence
After the reaping, we don't do very much planning for this project until after the Games begin in the novel. In the meantime, however, I keep track of how students performed on quizzes and other major assignments. Those who score well earn "Panem" cash. I don't hand out the Panem cash until later, though (many are likely to lose it if you pass it out before they can use it). They can use the Panem cash to sponsor Tributes (this comes later).

Students earned "Panem" cash by scoring well on quizzes/tests, getting sponsors for their District, and completing tasks in class. Students could also earn them by donating food to a local food pantry.

Rather than rewarding individuals, you could average the scores for each District and the Gamemakers and have overall team scores (not to go in the grade book, but to earn Panem cash). This will build team unity and those who are stronger in the group may cheer their classmates on and even help them study.

Throughout the novel, have a place on your board where you record each group's average score. This keeps their competitive spirit strong. Rate the group with the highest average a "12" and the group with the lowest average a "1." (If you have more than 12 groups in one class, you can adjust the numbers). This is the first of their three training scores.

Sponsorship
Once we begin reading Part 3 of the novel (and some years I've started sooner, depending on my time constraints), I give students time in class to work with their groups for their marketing campaign. You can download a free advertising/marketing campaign lesson {HERE}.

After students have their marketing materials made, we display the posters in the room and show their videos. I give every student 5 Panem dollars to use to "sponsor" the Tribute with the best campaign based on the marketing materials. This is also when I give the students/groups who earned extra Panem cash their additional dollars to use to vote.

The Gamemakers keep track of the votes (though I always check to make sure there's no padding of anyone's coffers, so to speak). They tally how many dollars each Tribute earned. The Tributes with the most dollars scores a 12 (one boy and one girl), then the Gamemakers go through all the rest and rate them based on the amount they earned. The Tributes who earned the least score a 1.

Physical Skills
The Gamemakers create physical challenges for the Tributes to compete. However, every year when we do this, we will have the rest of the students just watch. This past year I gave more students extra jobs (we were also short on Gamemakers because I had a really small group of sophomores). The next time I do this, I am going to require the Gamemakers to come up with group challenges, so the District members work as a team. That way all of the students are actively engaged.

Students have had some pretty creative challenges over the years: camouflage the orange backpack, the "cornucopia" sprint, and even a "fireball" dodge ball game where the Tributes could not touch the ball (not even to catch it) or they were burned. The Tribute who lasted the longest achieved the highest training score.

Training Scores
The Gamemakers averaged the three separate training scores together to crown the overall victor.

Panem Cash
This past spring I tried something new with the Panem cash each District earned. I divided it up (and I also granted the Gamemakers cash, as well) and let students spend their earned money in the Capitol General Store. The store was only open on the last day of school and students came in during lunch to shop. (I made sure that every student had cash to spend in the General Store.)

Items I had in the store included The Hunger Games themed folders, notebooks, novels, magnets, bookmarks, and more. Many of these prizes I purchased at a discount or earned from Scholastic with Bonus Points from their book club. Then I had a bunch of Target 1Spot finds, like picture frames, puzzles, pens/pencils. And candy is always a hit.

The benefits of Scholastic Book Clubs: earning bonus points to get The Hunger Games items! Students could use their "Panem" cash to purchase the items.

The Capitol Healing Stick (a.k.a chapstick)

These sold out! They were a hit with the girls. :)

I've been teaching the novel since 2009, so I've had a lot of time to try different things (some activities work with some students, some don't). And I'll probably mix things up again this year with my new group of sophomores. ;)

If you want to host a reaping/training, but need more structure, I have a priced resource you can download, found {HERE}. I'll be updating it soon to include a few new things I incorporated this year.

Have a great school year!