The Hunger Games in phys ed

This is a lesson plan I developed to integrate The Hunger Games into high school phys ed. It has been written with Grade 9-12 Ontario Healthy Active Living in mind, but could be used as a leadership project with the Grade 12 Recreation and Fitness Leadership course. If you use it, let me know how it went!

Hunger Games Training Days lesson plan by

The Hunger Games and the dystopian nature-disconnect

We've spent a lot of time in my literacy class talking about The Hunger Games and how teachers can harness its popularity to make literacy connections across the curriculum. Here are few general thoughts on The Hunger Games to add to the multitude of voices out there.

The Hunger Games as social commentary
The Hunger Games suggests a variety of social issues without going into great depth on any of them. At its heart, it is an action-packed hero’s quest told through the eyes of a strong-but-flawed heroine fighting to survive in a dystopian future. As New Yorker critic David Denby put it, “the reason for its success is simple: it makes teens feel both victimized and important”.

Nevertheless, The Hunger Games is a great starting point for exploring a variety of current environmental and social justice issues. Panem is post-climate change North America, so The Hunger Games’ popularity may partly be due to young peoples’ very real concerns about climate change. And there are parallels with the Occupy movement: Panem’s “99%” live in a state of ongoing environmental strife, food insecurity and resource depletion while the remaining few live in the Capitol, where the nation’s wealth and power are concentrated. Though there may not be a cause-and-effect relationship between The Hunger Games and the Occupy movement, there is certainly an element of art-imitating-life-imitating-art that is worth exploring with students.

The Capitol itself is a leisure dystopia. Living in idle wealth, its residents are obsessed with style and engaged in a never-ending game of physical one-up-manship, going so far as to disfigure themselves to attract notice. Oblivious to the food shortages in the rest of the country, residents eat rich foods and engage in planned bingeing and purging. All this behaviour is only slightly more extreme than our current celebrity culture and standards of beauty, and is a clear metaphor for the world food supply and Western overconsumption (and Hollywood is too close to the Capitol’s geographic location to be a coincidence).

It would be interesting to investigate with students the trend for dystopian settings in young adult fiction over the last few years. Dystopian fiction has typically become more popular in times of social crisis. For example, the triumvirate of twentieth century dystopian fiction (A Brave New World, Farenheit 451 and 1984) was written during the World War II/Cold War years.

The dystopian nature-disconnect
Most fictional dystopias are set in highly urban environments or ravaged wastelands, and even those that are set in relatively healthy landscapes isolate their characters from contact with the natural world, as in Bradbury’s Farenheit 451, where the countryside is the domain of the exiles. The Hunger Games is no different: the land has been wasted, resources have been depleted, citizens are prohibited from wandering freely in the forest and gates surround the districts to separate humans from their natural environment. Wild landscapes and the animals that inhabit them are perceived as dangerous.

Why is this such a common element in dystopian fiction? I think it’s because the primal connection humans have with the land is fundamentally incompatible with dystopian power structures. Beyond providing sustenance, nature has a healing and revitalizing power and is intrinsically linked to human freedom and happiness. Seen through the lens of the Western dualistic nature/culture paradigm, a dystopian superpower cannot not effectively control its subjects if the people have healthy relationships with the land, which is by definition wild and uncontrollable. Excluding nature’s light and beauty excludes hope, which enables control. Separating people from the place in which they live is necessary in dystopian worlds, because a return to nature would lead to rebellion and independence. The staging of the final battle in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (in which the Rebel Alliance finally succeeds in overthrowing the Galactic Empire) on the lush forest moon of Endor can be seen as an example of this. In The Hunger Games, this is played out through the heroine, Katniss Everdeen.

Katniss has a deep connection to the land, which has been fundamental to her survival throughout her life. As a young girl, the sight of a single dandelion changed Katniss’ life, inspiring her to hunt and forage to keep her family from starving and to provide healing medicines. Because these acts are illegal  all resources belong to the state, and wandering in the woods is forbidden  Katniss’ relationship with the land defines her as a rebel before the story even begins. Beyond the resources the woods provide, Katniss also finds existential freedom and relief there. This bond with the natural world and the vitality it gives her is in stark contrast to the dreary hopelessness of the other residents of her community, who remain caged within the district fences, and to the shallow, overconsumptive urbanity of the Capitol residents, who do not realize they are imprisoned by their luxury.

Once she enters the Hunger Games arena, it is Katniss’ skill as a forager, hunter and herbalist that enable her to survive. But beyond these superficial skills, I think it’s Katniss’ lifelong immersion in nature that gives her the self-assurance and freedom of mind needed to defy the Capitol and ultimately spark a rebellion against its repressive regime. It would be interesting to do a comparative study of other dystopian novels to explore the links across the genre between nature, rebellion and freedom.

Related to Katniss’ connection with the land, The Hunger Games offers another type of literacy beyond the millions of books its fans have read. As an expert expert hunter and forager, Katniss knows how to read signs in nature as efficiently as readers of books can decode symbols on a page. It is this reading of the land that gives her access to the physical world and enables her survival, and gives educators an opportunity to forge a curricular connection with environmental stewardship and traditional Native ways of knowing. Done with care, the popularity of The Hunger Games could be harnessed as a tool to develop interest in and validation of indigenous culture amongst both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal youth.

Stay tuned for a lesson plan incorporating The Hunger Games into the phys ed curriculum!

Guess Who? The Periodic Table!

Guess Who? The Periodic Table! by ncgillis

I developed this game as part of a “creativity in science teaching” assignment. Educational games are excellent ways of providing differentiated instruction in the classroom. At their best, they can hold a students’ attention far longer than a teacher can, allow for differentiated learning through visual, kinesthetic and interpersonal stimulation, increase motivation for learning through playful competition, and encourage oral communication, collaboration and peer teaching between players. Most importantly, they make learning fun.

Game Play
Guess Who? The Periodic Table! is played in the same way as the original Hasbro game Guess Who? The periodic table game cards are designed to be printed and used with the game trays provided with the original game.

At its core, Guess Who? is a modified game of “20 Questions” (see player rules provided with the game cards for details). Note that with either game card, students may ask any questions about an element’s properties (lustrous, flammable, metal, gas, etc.) but may not ask questions about an element’s location on the periodic table, as this would make the game too easy.

Game Card 1: The First 24 Elements
As the title suggests, this card includes only the first 24 elements, and is designed to encourage familiarity with the symbols for and physical and chemical properties of these elements (e.g., density, texture, combustibility, etc.), as mandated by the Ontario Grade 9 Science curriculum.

Students may need to refer to their notes or textbooks to help them formulate appropriate questions about the physical and chemical properties of the elements. Doing so will reinforce learning from lessons, labs and other activities and should be encouraged.

Game Card 2: The Elements and STSE
This game card expands student thinking about the elements beyond their properties to their historical, cultural, economic and environmental significance, and includes some of the lesser-known elements. Most of the information on this game card extends learning beyond the Ontario Grade 9 Science curriculum.

Variation
Though Guess Who? is designed as a two-player game, teachers may print a class set of game cards and provide one to each student, without the game trays. Students could then play in pairs or small groups, stroking out elements as they are eliminated through questioning. Laminated game cards could be reused: students could write on them with dry erase markers, wax crayons or grease pencils.

Skills encouraged
The original Guess Who? is a simple but effective game that encourages a variety of skills that are important to the Ontario science curriculum:

• logical thinking
• deductive reasoning
• observation and visual discrimination
• grouping
• question formulation
• listening and oral communication

In addition to promoting these skills, Guess Who? The Periodic Table! also encourages students to:

• use vocabulary associated with the chemical elements and the periodic table (alkali metals, halogens, noble gases, etc.)
• recognize elemental symbols (Fe, Cl, N, Na, etc.)
• become familiar with the positions of elements and groups on the table
• compare and contrast physical properties of different elements

Use in the classroom
Guess Who? The Periodic Table! can be used in the classroom in a variety of ways:

• as part of a series of hands-on activity centres that allow students to explore scientific concepts and learning with partners or in small groups
• as a group or partner activity to familiarize students with or consolidate learning of the periodic table and the properties of the first 20 elements (students will be able to self-assess their additional learning needs based on how easily they can formulate questions that get them closer to winning the game)
• as a class activity to review learning about the chemical and physical properties of elements and the organization of the periodic table in Grade 9 Science
• a class-wide diagnostic tool at the beginning of the Grade 10 Science chemistry unit to assess how well students remember what they learned in Grade 9
• as a culminating activity, students could develop their own versions of Guess Who? incorporating physical and chemical properties of the elements. Student success at developing this variation would allow for assessment of overall learning about the properties of elements covered in class
• as a tool to inspire greater depth and breadth of learning through independent study in gifted or advanced learners

The Ontario Science Curriculum and Guess Who? The Periodic Table
Guess Who? The Periodic Table! encourages thinking in each of the four categories of knowledge and skills identified in the achievement chart for the Ontario science curriculum:

• Knowledge and understanding (through familiarity with chemical elements and the periodic table)
• Thinking and investigation (through questioning and observing)
• Communication (through oral communication, use of vocabulary and terminology)
• Application (by making connections between science, technology, society, and the environment)

Contact me if you would like the complete Ontario Grade 9 Science curriculum fit.

Literacy connections
Guess Who? The Periodic Table can increase student proficiency at reading symbols used in chemistry, particularly the symbols for the elements themselves, as well as various laboratory and cultural symbols (toxicity, radioactivity, gas, etc.).

“The Elements and STSE” game card encourages scientific literacy through connections with etymology and mythology, and can be a way of piquing student interest in various elements and driving them to do further reading on various topics.

Extensions
For students looking for additional challenges, “The Elements and STSE” game card can be used to encourage further study on a variety of topics, including:

• etymology of element names
• history of a particular element’s discovery
• scientist who first isolated or discovered a particular element
• contributions of female chemists
• economic importance of various elements
• environmental risks associated with various elements (bioacummulation in ecosystems, groundwater contamination, impacts of mining)
• toxicity and health risks of various elements

Students can also use the game cards as a model to create their own version of Guess Who? for other science units (e.g., cell organelles, ecosystems, living organisms, etc.).

The periodic table included with the game cards and instructions is Ptable.com's Dynamic Periodic Table. The Royal Society of Chemistry's Visual Elements Periodic Table is also an excellent resource.

If you use this activity with your students, let me know in the comments how it went!