This semester my LA II class read "The Hunger Games" as the class book to read. Naturally, it was a hit with everyone. I love being an English teacher for many reasons, but my favorite reason (by far!) is introducing students to literature. My absolute favorite line is 'the book was way better...' YES!! That is what I live for.
This class was especially challenged by the book and the 'deeper' thinking that went into it. I was so proud of their success that I wanted to come up with a capstone activity for them. The fact that we finished at the end of the school year was an added bonus for everyone.
I first through the idea out to the students, asking what they would want to do for a 'finishing' activity. They all immediately said, 'Let's have a Hunger Games!!' Followed by a blood thirsty look and scan of who they could take out in the games. While this is a fun idea, no way. The whole point of the Hunger Games is to kill. There was no way I could set up a game, on such a short amount of time, where students could 'kill' each other and I could keep track of it all.
I did A LOT of searching on the internet, Pinterest, and talking with colleagues on how I could pull something off. In the end Pinterest and my buddies helped me out a lot.
I found a link on Pinterest where someone had a paint Hunger Games. This idea had merit! Some of the other teachers helped pitch in ideas, paint, glitter, and a few other essentials to have the games.
The next step was getting permission and actually seeing if the students liked the idea. I'm blessed with an awesome principal that really keeps an open mind. My students also liked the idea of getting to throw paint at each other, without someone yelling at them.
We set it up for the last day of school, May 18, and proceeded to plan. I got glitter to represent the 'fire balls' being thrown at Katniss. Then I asked random students, and community members to be 'muttations' and hit them randomly with paint. All the students brought tshirts to school for the last two days of school and they decorated them according to the district they wanted to represent.
Unfortunately there wasn't a lot of people around for the last day of school. Can I blame them? No. Was I disappointed? Yes. The Tundra and other villages were calling and I respect that. A large portion of the class did not show up....but the ones that did had an REALLY fun time :)
I started off by taking a bunch of finger paint (thank you Megan Cowles for donating it all) and putting it into different containers to put around our cornucopia. It was watered down a bit to help with consistency and I also thought it would also be a fun challenge for the students.
Next Megan and I put orange cones around a large area out on the tundra - to stand for the arena. I wanted to make sure I didn't have anyone running away to town and saying that they were still in the arena. We took the largest cone and set it on a side of the arena - the cornucopia.
In all I had six students - and they had a BLAST!
In the end, the muttations and myself all joined in and it became a free for all. There was mud wrestling, glitter bombs, and a lot of laughing.
Below are some of my favorite pictures from the Games. Overall, I think this was such a great way to end the school year. I asked our secretary if she thought having a 'Staff Hunger Games' at the end of the year would be fun - she opted to be sick that day. So for now I'll stick with having fun with my students. Until the next class reads it :)
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| Preparing for the Hunger Games |
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| Glitter Bomb! aka Fire Bomb |
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| He LOVED it |
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| Mutiny...everyone joined in |
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| Enough paint? |
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| We are beasts |
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| Sneak attack....that ended in the mud |
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| Thanks Ms Megan for helping out!! |
Kendall and I died in the deadliest battle in the arena
Mariam won the games, due to the least amount of paint on her - literally she hid on the tundra and watched
Hope you enjoyed the update. It literally took over an hour to remove all the paint. So.....there is a slight downside.
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