The Hunger Games Lesson Plans That Go Beyond Comprehension

The book where students get mad when you have to stop for the day? That was always The Hunger Games for me. 😆 Even students who normally thought reading was a chore were begging for one more chapter. If you’ve been thinking about reading The Hunger Games in your middle school classroom, or you’re looking for tips to beef up your Hunger Games lesson plans, then you’ve found the right place. I’m showing you exactly how I structure this novel for 6th-8th grade.

About The Hunger Games

Set in Panem, The Hunger Games follows sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen from District 12. Katniss volunteers to take his younger sister’s spot in a televised fight that happens each year in the Capitol. This fight, called The Hunger Games, is a punishment for the districts’ rebellion against the Capitol. Now, every year the districts must pay by sending a male and female to the arena where only one survives. 

This book does best with 6th-8th grade students. You can include it in your regular fiction unit, but I personally recommend teaching it inside a dystopian unit because you can dig into things like world-building, propaganda, and symbolism. This book does include violence against kids (they are competing to death, after all), but it’s nothing that your middle schoolers can’t handle.

Structuring The Hunger Games Lesson Plans

There is a lot to unpack in this novel. When mapping out The Hunger Games lesson plans, I found that 23 lessons let me dive deep enough into the content of the novel and the standards I needed to cover.

I don’t like to use comprehension worksheets or random activities with my novel units, though because I found that it always kept students on the surface. Instead, I recommend Socratic Seminar. Students will prepare their thinking, come to the circle with things to say, and then engage with other students around a central question. It might seem idealistic, but I ran my novel studies this way for years, and I found students gained a deeper knowledge of the ELA standards. 

Here’s a look at how I laid out The Hunger Games lesson plans –

• Pre-Lesson: Socratic Seminar Norms
• Lesson One: Point of View
• Lesson Two: Dystopian Elements
• Lesson Three: Dystopian World Building
• Lesson Four: Propaganda
• Lesson Five: Character Traits
• Lesson Six: Theme
• Lesson Seven: Central Idea
• Lesson Eight: Author’s Craft
• Lesson Nine: Flashbacks and Flashforwards
• Lesson Ten: Symbolism
• Lesson Eleven: Author’s Purpose
• Lesson Twelve: Literary Imagery
• Lesson Thirteen: Mood and Tone
• Lesson Fourteen: Literary Conflict
• Lesson Fifteen: Allusions and Analogies
• Lesson Sixteen: The Antihero
• Lesson Seventeen: Dystopian Archetypes
• Lesson Eighteen: Suspense, Foreshadowing, and Cliffhangers
• Lesson Nineteen: Narrative Point of View Writing
• Lesson Twenty: Movie Comparison
• Lesson Twenty-One: Comparing Texts
• Lesson Twenty-Two: Objective Summaries
• Lesson Twenty-Three: The Hunger Games Final Project

Every lesson includes discussion via Socratic Seminar. There are no “vocab days” or “comprehension days”. Reading, writing, vocabulary, comprehension, everything happens within one class period. If that sounds crazy, keep reading. I’ll give you an example of how it works.

The Socratic Seminar Method 

Every lesson follows the same framework in The Hunger Games unit. But it never gets boring because each day focuses on a new topic from the content that’s been read. I’m going to use lesson six as an example, and it focuses on theme.

The lesson starts with students cutting out as well as gluing the interactive notebook element into their journals. You’ll then lead a short lesson on theme, using the ready-to-go teacher slides. Then, you’ll present the guiding question: What recurring conflicts, choices, or experiences are helping develop a central theme in The Hunger Games so far? 

Next, it’s time to read. As a class, independently, or in small groups, students will read chapters 8-9. As they read, you’ll want to cover key vocabulary and stop for comprehension checks (comprehension questions are included in the lesson plan). When they finish reading, they’ll spend 5 minutes writing about the guiding question.

Then, you’ll present the interpretive question: Based on what you’ve read so far, what do you think Suzanne Collins is suggesting about survival, sacrifice, or power? They’ll move into Socratic Seminar, where they discuss this question in-depth together. You’re not leading the conversation. That’s the students’ job! You’re just there as a guide.

This same flow and format repeats with every The Hunger Games lesson plan. It becomes familiar for students, but never boring, as there is always something new to discuss.

Adding in The Hunger Games Movie

You might wonder if this novel is worth reading with the class, since it’s a popular film. Won’t they already know the plot? But I actually found that this helped me in the classroom. For many students, reading struggles can prevent them from being fully present in the novel. Since many students will already know the basic plot of The Hunger Games, they’re not spending as much time on surface-level skills like comprehension. Instead, they can dig deeper into analysis, which is ultimately where you want students anyway! I also included a movie comparison lesson in The Hunger Games unit, so students can compare and contrast the movie and text.

If you’re looking for support with The Hunger Games lesson plans, my Hunger Games unit has it all. You’ll find daily lesson plans, teacher slides, interactive notebook pages, student reference materials, and more. And the entire unit is built around Socratic Seminar, so you can go beyond basic comprehension.