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).
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| 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. |
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}.
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.
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.)
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| 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. |
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| The Capitol Healing Stick (a.k.a chapstick) |
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| These sold out! They were a hit with the girls. :) |
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!
