The Hunger Games

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. List the top 10 things people need to survive and be happy. Then, add a rationale for each idea on your list.

Teaching Suggestion: Prompting students to think through, write about, and discuss this big question before accessing the following texts or similar resources allows them to categorize their ideas and compare them to those of their peers. If you opt to share the information in the following video and podcast, you may be able to bring an element of psychological studies into the discussion. This hierarchy of needs connects to the theme of Survival and Sacrifice in The Hunger Games.

• This 6-minute video from Wichita State University explains Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and its implications for our lives.
• This episode of “Ted Radio Hour” offers a 48-minute podcast, with clips from various TED Talks, and explores Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in depth. Dissecting this hierarchy that continues to shape psychology provides ways to look at society in the novel and beyond. The first 5 minutes introduce Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, briefly explaining each level of the pyramid.

Short Activity

Work with your small group to develop a definition of truth. Then, create an advertisement for truth. Share your advertisement with peers and compare definitions in the class.

Teaching Suggestion: Truth might seem like a simple concept, but in our society, it is debated. Dissecting this topic can help students access the theme of Duplicity, Deception, and the Line Between Fiction and Reality in The Hunger Games. The ads students create could be visual posters, videos, or presentations. They could also be brief drafts or developed into more polished pieces. Sharing these or other resources might benefit the students in their task.

• This article from the Pew Research Center explores truth and people’s views on truth in our society.
• This 6-minute video, presented by Associate Philosophy Professor Joshua Rasmussen, offers insights into the nature of truth.

Differentiation Suggestion: To increase rigor for students needing an additional challenge, consider incorporating mini lessons on ethos, pathos, and logos and requiring students to analyze each other’s ads for those rhetorical elements.

Personal Connection Prompt

This prompt can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before reading the novel.

What do you see as a strength of our society? What makes it a strength? What is the impact of this strength on individual members of society?

Teaching Suggestion: Dystopian literature focuses mainly on dark elements of the world. This prompt offers a chance to see what our world is doing right. Reflecting on something good in the world can provide an opportunity to imagine a utopian society and prepare students for further discussion on the juxtaposition with dystopian settings like the one in the novel.

• This article from Miami Dade College collects helpful definitions and characteristics of dystopias and utopias.