Students Starving for the Hunger Games

My Students: Have you ever seen or heard about a book that you wanted read, but couldn't put your hands on it. My students are begging for copies of Suzanne Collin's books "The Hunger Gam...

My Project: The classroom sets of the two books by Suzanne Collins and the accompanying audio books will create a hunger for reading contemporary fiction. "The Hunger Games" is such a co... more»

My Students: Have you ever seen or heard about a book that you wanted read, but couldn't put your hands on it. My students are begging for copies of Suzanne Collin's books "The Hunger Games" and "Catching Fire". They are hungry for a classroom set of the books and audio versions.

My students live in a rural high poverty area of Mississippi. The have very limited exposure to current novels. We live 35 miles from the nearest bookstore. Our public library has struggled with major structural problems since Hurricane Katrina. A steady leaking problem has caused many of the books to be contaminated with black mold. Our school library has become the students' primary source for contemporary fiction.

Our school has greatly benefited from contemporary novels donated through donorschoose.org. The library circulation has increased tremendously and many of the books have long waiting list for check out. Our desire is to take things to the next level. We want to further inspire our students to read through the use of classroom book sets and audio books in the English classroom. We have chosen two books by Suzanne Collins because of their popularity and her stirring book theme of world hunger. This is a very relevant topic for students living in poverty.

My Project: The classroom sets of the two books by Suzanne Collins and the accompanying audio books will create a hunger for reading contemporary fiction. "The Hunger Games" is such a compelling and well written book that readers have a hard time putting the book down. It draws you quickly into the sequel "Catching Fire".

The use of these classroom book sets and the audio books will draw our students further into the story line. These books will promote a lot classroom discussion about the plot and themes of the book.

One project we will do is a poster about the Hunger Games. Each student will be asked to show the foods they would miss if they had to live in the book. They will discuss what they would be willing to do for food. They will be asked to develop of plan of how they would make sure their family was fed if they lived inside this book. Each student will develop a book cover and story summary for "Mockingjay" the yet released final book in the series.

This project will promote a love of reading in our students. As our students engage more in reading these books they will foster stronger reading comprehension skills. They will be exposed to new words that increase their grasp of vocabulary meanings. Reading empowers students with the ability to develop greater comprehension. This will enable our students to be more successful in academics. This project will give our students much need exposure to contemporary fiction. hide»