AGENDAVocabulary Test: (Chapters 1-4)

The Hunger Games: Themes and Concepts

Discussion:

A Well-Told StorySentence length.

Constructing an action sequence

Reflecting on the Event's Significance pp. 48-49

In-Class Writing1. Focus on the climax of your event. Write a paragraph describing the action

using short and long sentences to control the intensity of your narrative.

2. Recalling Your Remembered Feelings and Thoughts

3. Exploring Your Present Perspective

4. Formulating a Tentative Thesis Statement

VOCABULARY TEST

The test covers the

words from Chapters

1-4.

You will have 15

minutes to complete

the test.

There are 20 words.

In your groups

Take five minutes to discuss the various themes and

concepts that appear in The Hunger Games.

Try to identify particular passages from the text that

support your assertions

DISCUSSION:

THEMES AND CONCEPTSFRIENDSHIP

FAMILY

SURVIVAL

FREEDOM AND OPPRESSION

MATERIALSIM AND CLASS

???

Br

Briefly identify the five

parts of your essay

• A Well-told storyTo create suspense,, Wolff uses a combination of short and long sentences. Reread this paragraph and consider how they work here.

Use Sentence

Length to

Control the

Tension in your

story

1. Focus on the climax

of your event. Write a

paragraph describing the

action using short and

long sentences to control

the intensity of your

narrative.

Show that the event was important

• Dramatize the event so readers can understand your feelings about it.

• Show scenes from your point of view so readers can identify with you.

Tell us that the event was important

• Tell how you felt at the time of the experience

• Tell how you feel about it now, in reflection.

The Goal: Indicate the Event’s

Significance

Before the opening ceremonies, Katniss meets with her stylist, Cinna, to prepare. Cinna

presses a button and a fancy meal of “Chicken and chunks of oranges cooked in a creamy

sauce laid on a bed of pearly white grain, tiny green peas and onions, rolls shaped like

flowers, and for dessert, a pudding the color of honey” appears (65). Katniss thinks about

how difficult it would be to get a meal like this in District 12:

What must it be like, I wonder, to live in a world where food appears at the press

of a button? How would I spend the hours I now commit to combing the woods for

sustenance if it were so easy to come by? What do they do all day, these people in the

Capitol, besides decorating their bodies and waiting around for a new shipment of

tributes to roll in and die for their entertainment?

I look up and find Cinna’s eyes trained on mine. ‘How despicable we must seem

to you,’ he says. (65)

Katniss doesn’t respond to Cinna’s statement, but she agrees in her head. “He’s right,

though. The whole rotten lot of them is despicable” (65).

Although our world does not really consist of a Capitol and many districts, there are still

some people who live more comfortably than others. For people like me who live in privilege,

life is easy. Food is readily available if I want to eat. Outside of school, I don’t really have

many responsibilities. I don’t have to worry about how I will survive day to day. My family

has told me on many occasions to think about how lucky I am to live the way I do. In other

countries, life is hard. In Africa, children starve to death as a result of famine and poverty.

People my age in some countries are working more than my parents do. Katniss’s disgust

for the extravagant Capitol is similar to the disgust I felt for myself when I listened to

an account of one man’s visit to factories in China.

The Strategy: Recall Remembered Feelings and Thoughts: Answer

These Questions:

1. What were your expectations before the event?

2. What was your first reaction to the event as it was happening and right after

it ended?

3. How did you show your feelings? What did you say?

4. What did you want the people involved to think of you? Why did you care

what they thought of you?

5. What did you think of yourself at the time?

6. How long did these initial feelings last?

7. What were the immediate consequences of the event for you personally?

Pause now to reread what you have written. Then write another sentence or

two about the event’s significance to you at the time it occurred.

The Strategy Continued: Explore Your Present Perspective

1. Looking back, how do you feel about this event? If you understand it

differently now than you did then, what is the difference?

2. What do your actions at the time of the event say about the kind of person

you were then? How would you respond to the same event if it occurred

today?

3. Can looking at the event historically or culturally help explain what

happened? For example, did you upset racial, gender, or religious

expectations? Did you feel torn between identities or cultures? Did you

feel out of place?

4. Do you see now that there was a conflict underlying the event? For

example, were you struggling with contradictory desires? Did you feel

pressured by others? Were you desires and rights in conflict with

someone else’s? Was the event about power or responsibility.

5. Pause to reflect on what you have written about your present perspective.

Then write another sentence or two, commenting on the event’s

significance as you look back on it

Emphasizing the significance of

your event

Readers do not expect you to begin your narrative essay with the kind of explicit thesis statement typical of argumentative or explanatory writing. If you do decide to tell readers explicitly why the event was meaningful or significant, you will most likely do so as you tell the story, by commenting on or evaluating what happened, instead of announcing the significance at the beginning. Keep in mind that you are not obliged to tell readers the significance, but you must show it through the way you tell the story.

The Strategy

Review what you wrote for Reflecting on the Event’s

Significance, and add another two or three sentences, not

necessarily summarizing what you already have written but

extending your insights into the significance of the event,

what it meant to you at the time, and what it means to you

now.

HOMEWORK

Read: HG through chapter 12. SMG p 37 “Commentary: Autobiographical Significance,” and 625-633.

Post #5: Post your draft: Long quote; transition; thesis; intro to event, description of place(s), description of people, a dialogue or two, the climax (with short and long sentences working to achieve your goal), and a paragraph that speaks to the significance or your event (use the list of answers to the questions on slide #10 and #11); end with framing plan.

Study: Vocab 5-7

Bring: HG and SMG; A copy of post #5