The Hunger Games in the Classroom

In my quest to acquaint myself with recommended books for secondary level students I have wrapped up my reading of The Hunger Games – this is the easy part. After a total of six hours reading time over the course of three weeks I am now ready to wrestle with the planning process of implementing this into an ELA class. In a class of students whose abilities may range across the literacy spectrum this is where things get a little tricky. According to the Quantitative Measures listed on the Common Core Standards site, this book has a text complexity rating for 7th grade to adult level. But in an effort to boost student reading skills of my students to a higher level, I would use this as a whole-class novel for 7th graders. The process would begin with a diagnostic teaching assessment of the reading levels of each student in the class. I can assume that the class will range from those students who will read The Hunger Games at an independent level to a frustration level, with most students falling somewhere in between at the instructional level. There are a total of twenty seven chapters in the novel and each would have to be carefully assessed to determine which may require additional support, which may require some scaffolding and which are independently accessible for the class as a whole. The chapters that are independently accessible can be assigned to students to read outside of class on their own. For those that are a bit more challenging I would utilize some scaffolding strategies to build their comprehension. I would begin the scaffolding process by introducing vocabulary prior to beginning a particularly difficult chapter. As a dystopian fiction, The Hunger Games introduces some challenging vocabulary that would benefit the entire class to become familiar with, for example, apothecary, paraffin, tesserae, and the word Panem, which is Latin for “bread”. For chapters that require some further scaffolding, I would generate an outline of a graphic organizer as a class which I would then allow the students to complete as they read silently. If the chapter seems too difficult for some of the class then I could use the Oral Reading Strategy to model thinking strategies to instruct the students on ways to maintain focus as well as monitor comprehension. Sounds doable right? I realize that the realities in the classroom may not be so clear cut but these are just some ideas to shelve while I build my repertoire of young adult literature. I have yet to decide what’s next for me though I am tempted to start on the next book in The Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire. As Collin does at the end of each chapter in the novel, the book ends unresolved with Katniss and Peeta returning home after winning the Hunger Games to confront their real lives. The big question still lingering is if the Katniss-Peeta romance was all part of the Hunger Games strategy.