Nonlinear Powerpoint Final Project

This past weekend I was hospitalized for a gallbladder infection, and since I was not able to present my PowerPoint to the class, I wanted to share it here. I decided to plan my lesson around literary elements, using The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins as a medium. In my fictional class, we had just finished reading the novel, and this lesson was designed to focus on learning the literary elements through examples from the story, rather than just explaining what each element consists of. I chose to focus my lesson on six elements: characters, theme, plot, setting, climax, and resolution. Each student was designated a District, and would work with one other student to complete the lesson (representative of the two tributes from each of the 12 Districts who compete in the Hunger Games). The PowerPoint lesson was nonlinear, meaning that the students would click on links in the presentation that would jump them to another slide.

The students had to read through a brief description of each story element. After they were comfortable with each element, they would "compete in a challenge in the Games." Each challenge consisted of 2-4 writing prompts that would make them think critically about the story element and apply their knowledge to the novel. For example, the writing prompt for Resolution was, "Do you think the problem in the story was really resolved? Why or why not?" The students would have to understand what "resolution" was in order to apply this knowledge to the story and reflect on the question.

I chose to use The Hunger Games in this lesson because I wanted my students to really be engaged in what they were learning. Every student I know is excited about this book series, and it has a LOT of good information to offer to students, especially intermediate ESL students. Too often, language teachers neglect to build on ELL's cognitive development because they are focused primarily on their language development. The Hunger Games as a lot of deep and hidden themes that require students to really think critically in many aspects... Could this happen one day in our society? Does it already reflect some aspects of our society? How is it fair that the Capital gets to waste money while the Districts starve every day? This novel allows the opportunity for language, cognitive, and academic development, if lessons are structured and planned carefully.