Game On: A Hunger Games Novel Unit Designed for Student Engagement

What if your next novel unit didn’t just keep students reading, but had them thinking, strategizing, and, best of all, playing all the way through?

When we started our latest project, a Hunger Games novel unit, we estimated it would take a few months to create and focus, as many Hunger Games novel units do, on how the high-interest text novel exemplifies the characteristics of a dystopia.

A year later, we’re finally proud to unveil our full Hunger Games novel unit built around the concept of games and designed for real student engagement in grades 7–10.

From our first brainstorming meeting, we aimed to create a Hunger Games novel unit that would combine rigorous standards alignment with activities that hold students’ attention. But we also wanted to do something different and something that would immerse students in the world of the Games without losing sight of the fact that while the Games are exciting . . . the government is still slaughtering children to maintain control over a population.

We’re proud to say that we think we’ve succeeded. Today’s post walks you through what’s inside our Hunger Games novel unit and why it works.

Why Theme the Unit Around “Games”?

Instead of focusing on dystopian elements (though they do make an appearance), we ultimately decided to explore two essential questions in our Hunger Games novel unit: What defines a game? And is the Hunger Games really a game?

Initially, the idea stemmed from our rough final project idea: having students create a dystopian board game. We thought it would be fun but struggled to figure out how to make it different from the great dystopia-themed units already out there. As we built our outline and re-read the novel, however, we kept coming back to this concept of games. Of course, we use games frequently as teachers to engage our students in learning. But do we ever stop and think about what makes a good game?

Once we started thinking (and Googling), we realized that the qualities that make a good game are concepts that middle and high school students have a lot to say about: strategy, competition, rules, and power. As the ideas started flowing, we realized that this theme gives students a unique way to engage with characterization, conflict, and power structures. Even better, the same strategizing and problem-solving skills we need to play (and create) games are exactly the kinds of critical thinking we want our students to do in our classrooms.

We also realized that a game-based unit takes a lot of time to create, and we were excited for an opportunity to fulfill our mission at Three Heads: helping you find the quality ELA resources you’d create yourself if you had more time.

What’s Included in our Hunger Games Novel Unit

This concept of “what makes a good game” runs through the entire unit, from the introductory activities to the final project. Not only do students consider the characteristics and ethics of games throughout their reading, but we also integrated gamified review activities that make students feel like they’re part of District 00, a district of our creation that specializes in academia and serves as the “brains” behind the innovations at the Capitol.

The ongoing premise? President Snow has kept them out of the games so far, but now they need to demonstrate that their superior knowledge continues to merit his protection. (The unit is designed for the first book in the trilogy, so the Games still exist at the end, and President Snow is still in power.)

Before the Reaping

The unit begins with introductory activities designed to provide background information, capture students’ interest, and activate thinking about key themes.

What Is a Dystopia?

Since The Hunger Games is, in fact, a classic dystopia, students do need to learn more about the characteristics of the genre. We created a brief teacher presentation on these characteristics, interwoven with a “case study” (Kurt Vonnegut’s short story “Harrison Bergeron”). Students take notes, engage in quickwrite activities, and review by completing a digital pixel puzzle. While the larger unit focuses more on games than dystopian elements, students still refer back to these notes several times throughout the unit.

Characteristics of a Game

Students start learning about the characteristics of a game by . . . playing a game, naturally! Steph and her brother are currently (and unashamedly) obsessed with The Floor on Hulu, so we created a Floor-inspired competition in which students, individually or on teams, identify images of a variety of games before taking notes on a “Characteristics of a Game” presentation that includes opportunities for quick writes, think-pair-shares, and practice activities. Students return to their notes multiple times throughout the unit.

Ancient Rome Escape Room

Our final introductory activity provides students with background knowledge. Collins’s novel is chock-full of references to ancient Rome that she uses to reinforce her themes about the dangers of authoritarian control and the injustices that comfortable and complacent societies will allow under the guise of entertainment. To help students recognize these allusions as they read (without a boring lecture), we created an “edition” of the Acta Diurna, an ancient Roman version of a newspaper, that holds all the factoids students need to complete a digital escape room activity.

Tribute Tracker

While the Tribute Tracker activity is a “during reading” activity, we’ve included components for an interactive bulletin board that you might want to set up before you start reading to bring Panem to life in your classroom and get students excited about the beginning of the 74th Hunger Games.

As they read the novel, students will keep track of information about each of the 24 tributes—their district, status (dead or alive), alliances, strengths, and weaknesses. Students have their own graphic organizer to complete, but to create a full-class experience, we’ve provided the materials so you can turn your bulletin boards into a classwide tribute tracker that follows the ups and downs of the Games in “real time.”

Into the Arena: Read, Review, Respond

With all this background information, students will be well prepared to immerse themselves in Panem’s 74th Hunger Games (spoiler alert, it’s going to be one to remember).

Guided Reading Questions

We’ve divided the chapters into groupings that can be completed in one class period; for each one, we’ve written our traditional guided reading questions: nine multiple-choice questions that draw students’ attention to key points while requiring them to practice their comprehension and analys skills, and one short-answer question that requires them to think a bit more deeply and practice elaborating on claims and/or supporting them with evidence.

Review Games

For each part of the novel, we’ve created three digital review games that, altogether, make up the Panem District Fair. Nine of Panem’s twelve districts sponsor games like District 10’s Cattle Round Up, District 2’s “Challenge a Future Champion” head-to-head match, and District 5’s Neon Nights BINGO. Students can work together or independently (we’ve provided a list of suggestions for implementation) to test their memory of each part of the novel. Each game includes a set of optional clue sheets, and we’ve included a Tribute Game Card students can use to track their progress throughout the District Fair.

Test Bank

We know holding students accountable for reading can be a challenge, especially if they’ll be doing that reading outside of class, so we created a 250-question test bank that you can use to build reading quizzes for each guided reading assignment or each part of the novel—the test bank is flexible so that you can decide what works best for you and your students.

Literary Analysis Activities

After completing each part of the novel, students engage in an interactive activity that moves beyond comprehension to analysis. This is where their District 00 “assignment” comes into play—the three challenges are all part of their efforts to keep President Snow from adding their tributes to the 75th Hunger Games.

At the end of Part 1, students complete a mini-escape room activity in which they identify examples of allusions from ancient Rome (which they learned about in the pre-reading activities).

Part 2 ends with a board-game-themed activity that asks, “Is the Hunger Games actually a game?” Students answer questions that help them compare the Hunger Games to the characteristics of a game covered in the introductory presentation. By the end of the activity, students must definitively answer the question of whether the Hunger Games is, in fact, a game (we have a hunch that you might already be able to guess the answer to that question).

Finally, after Part 3, students complete another mini-escape room, this time identifying examples of literary devices used throughout the novel.

Writing Assignments

Since we decided to conclude our Hunger Games novel unit with a creative project rather than a formal essay, we wanted to incorporate opportunities for students to get writing practice. For each of the three parts of the novel, we created a writing prompt that requires students to think deeply about the real-world implications of the Games, applying psychological, pop culture, and historical concepts to their reading. The writing assignments also link back to the “What Is a Dystopia?” and “Characteristics of a Game” presentations students completed before reading.

For Part 1, students review an infographic about explanations from social psychologists for why people conform; then, they apply their reading to the novel, describing an example of conformity from Part 1 and using one of the social psychology concepts to explain why that character (or those characters) might have chosen to conform to Panem’s authoritarian rules.

For Part 2, students reflect on the ethics of entertainment. After reading a short passage about ethical issues related to watching modern forms of entertainment, like American football and reality TV, students consider the extent to which the citizens of the Capitol who watch the Hunger Games are responsible for the deaths of the tributes.

Finally, for Part 3, students read a short excerpt from Machiavelli’s The Prince where he proposes that it is better for a leader to be feared than loved; after reading both the original and a modern translation, students support a claim about whether fear or love is a more powerful motivator in The Hunger Games.

As always, we’ve structured the writing assignments in our traditional 5C paragraph format with structured support that will help students of all levels write thoughtful analytical paragraphs.

Optional Dystopia Timed Write

While we wanted to end the unit with a creative project, we know that some teachers still like to incorporate a summative writing assignment, so we’ve included materials for an optional timed writing assignment (following the same 5C paragraph structure) in which students explain how The Hunger Games fulfills three of the nine characteristics of a dystopia they learned about in the introductory lesson.

After the Victor’s Interview: Reflect. Compare. Reimagine.

Once students have finished the novel, it’s time to engage with what they’ve learned and think deeply and creatively about the novel’s themes.

Unit Test and Review Crossword

The post-reading activities begin with a traditional unit test (includes character identification and reading comprehension questions as well as six questions about the background information presented in the pre-reading activities). Before the test, students complete a test review crossword that includes clues based on many (but not all) of the actual test questions. If you’ve used the test bank to create reading check quizzes, you can rest assured that the unit test has (mostly) different questions.

Movie Viewing Activity

No Hunger Games novel unit would be complete without a viewing of the excellent 2012 film adaptation, and keeping with the game theme, we’ve helped students to engage with the film through a class competition of “Hey, This Didn’t Happen in the Book” BINGO. All questions on the BINGO board are about differences between the book and the movie (forcing your students to pay attention instead of checking out), and there are seven versions of the board to keep things competitive.

The Control Room Gamemaker Pitch Project

For the final project in the Hunger Games novel unit, students are invited to participate in The Control Room, a Shark Tank-style pitch competition in which would-be Gamemakers pitch a new game for the country of Panem that has fewer human rights violations.

The activity includes planning pages and a script template for a two-minute pitch to “investors” that students can complete in groups or individually. Students must apply what they’ve learned about the characteristics of a game to save Panem from the problems it’s facing with the United Nations, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the General Association of World Sports Federations (GAWSF). Students must, however, create an idea for a game that will still appeal to the residents of the Capitol, demonstrating an understanding of the world they’ve been immersed in for weeks.

We’ve also included materials to bring the pitch project to life, whether you invite guest “investors” to participate in the panels or ask the rest of the class to share their thoughts with the “investors.”

What Makes This Hunger Games Novel Unit Engaging

Because game-based learning is woven throughout the unit, students aren’t reading yet another novel with the same-old worksheets and reading comprehension questions. Students are active and involved from the first day of the unit to the last, and the activities are embedded in a “story” that makes students feel like they’re part of the action.

Importantly, however, these activities aren’t just “fun.” They require students to engage with the details of the novel and build toward deep literary analysis (even though it doesn’t feel like it). Students make strategic decisions, evaluate other people’s choices, debate fairness, and connect elements from the novel to real-world systems. The Hunger Games, in this unit, isn’t a high-interest fictional premise but a tool for engaging with real questions about conformity, government control, and implications of the entertainment popular in our society.

Finally, the culminating project lets students create, not just analyze. Students apply what they’ve learned about games in a meaningful way. Instead of just analyzing fiction, they’re making that analysis and then doing something with it in a way that feels like they’re part of the action (and requires skills that are part of modern-day marketing and content creation).

How This Hunger Games Novel Unit Supports You, the Teacher

Much as we care about students, our primary goal is to support you, the teacher, which is why our unit is loaded with resources to make your life easier.

All materials are easy to implement immediately, whether you want to assign a digital version through your LMS or distribute printed copies (we recommend the digital version, if possible). While you don’t need to make edits, you can make edits to most of the materials (except for the presentations and digital escape room/review game activities, which rely heavily on formatting and coding).

We’ve provided all of the answer keys and rubrics you need to reduce your prep and grading time, and all student materials come with clear instructions and options for differentiation and scaffolding.

Our teacher overview provides you with over 30 pages of detailed instructions, suggestions for implementation, possible extension activities, and ways to differentiate each activity for students of varying levels.

And, finally, we’ve included two calendars: one for teachers who want to include every single activity (with a few extra days built in for review, revision, and “catch up”), and one for teachers on a time crunch who need to get through the unit more quickly. The pair of calendars and suggestions for implementation in the teacher overview allow you to customize the unit to best meet your students’ needs . . . without having to make extensive edits.

If you’re looking for a Hunger Games novel unit that’s rigorous, engaging, and (dare we say it) actually fun to teach, this is it.

Grab the full unit here (or check out the options for purchasing some individual activities separately).

Need more information to help you decide? We’d love to chat with you about it! You can find us at [email protected] or on Instagram @threeheads.works.