This document outlines an agenda for a class that includes presentations, discussions, and in-class writing activities related to vocabulary, The Hunger Games novel, and an essay assignment. It provides instructions for a vocabulary game where students compete to write correct definitions on a board. It also includes character descriptions and discussion prompts for The Hunger Games, as well as guidelines for writing a 3-5 page essay connecting a quoted event from the novel to a significant personal experience of the student's. The document gives strategies for writing an introduction with the quote, vivid descriptions of places and people, and a conclusion that ties back to the quote's meaning.

2. AGENDA
 Presentation: Vocabulary chapters 3-4
 Discussion: The Hunger Games: Stories
 Presentation: Essay #2
 In-Class Writing: page 46 SMG
1. Beginning with a quotation/transitioning to your remembered
event.
2. Vivid presentation of a place: Using sensory details: 643-648
3. Describe a person central to your event. Include a physical
description and gestures or behaviors.
4. Writing Dialogue.
5. Framing: beginnings and endings

3. The Game
• With your group, discuss the words on the next
slide for five or so minutes and prepare to
compete
• Each team will send one member to the board in
rotation.
• I will read a definition
• The first team member to write the correct
definition on the board scores a point for their
team.
• The team with the highest score at the end of the
game earns not only the glory of winning but
also five extra participation points.

4. Vocabulary

6. The Hunger Games
 Katniss Everdeen
 Gale Hawthorne
 Peeta Mellark
 Prim Everdeen
 Mrs. Everdeen
 Rue
 Haymitch Abernathy
 Cinna
 Effie Trinket
In your groups, make a list of one or more important experiences each of these
characters has. What kind of emotion does each provoke? Can you relate to any
one of these experiences?

8. The Writing Assignment
 Using The Hunger Games as your starting point,
write an essay about an event in your life that will
engage readers and that will, at the same time, help
them understand the significance of the event. Tell
your story dramatically and vividly in three to five
pages.
 Format: MLA style (For help, see “MLA
Formatting” on the website”). Please give your
paper an original title; don't underline or put
quotation marks around your own title.

9. The Goal: Writing a Good Introduction
The Strategy:
 Choose a provocative or interesting quotation (four typed lines or
more) from The Hunger Games and integrate it into your
introduction. You can start with the quotation, or you can work it in
after a few sentences.
 Summarize what is happening in the novel at the point of your
quotation, and then explain the context (particular setting) for the
quotation. This is important because it sets up the connection to
your own experience.
 Then, write a transition paragraph, making a connection between
the quotation and the event in your life. Your thesis sentence will
likely be the sentence in which you clearly make that connection
(we will talk more about theses in our next meeting).

10. 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.
How Despicable We Must Seem

11. 1. Choose a provocative or interesting quotation (four typed lines or more) from
The Hunger Games that you can connect to an experience in your own life.
2. Summarize what is happening in the novel at the point of your quotation.
3. Then, write a transition paragraph, making a connection between the quotation
and the event in your life.
4. Now make a quick narrative ladder:
 Where and when did your event
take place?
 Setting
 Rising action
 Climax
 Resolution

12. The Goal: Create A Vivid Presentation of Places
 Recreate the time and place of the event
 Ground readers in specifics:
• When? Christmas morning; one day in late fall, Saturday night
• Where? At a 7-11 in San Jose, at my Aunt Helen’s Easter party, In the back alley
of a club in Sunnyvale
 Name specific objects
• White, spherical snowball
• City clothes
• Translucent skin
• Dirty sidewalk

13. The Strategy: Listing Key
Places
 Make a list of all the places where the event occurred,
skipping some space after each entry on your list.
In the space after each entry on your list, make
some notes describing each place. What do
you see (except people for now)? What objects
stand out? Are thy large or small, green or
brown, square or oblong? What sounds do you
hear? Do you detect any smells? Does any
taste come to mind? Any textures?

14. The Goal: Make A Vivid Presentation of People
Descriptive details of behaviors or actions
• She stuck her hand in the bag and picked up the poor, little
dead squirrel.
• He drew his hands through his long, greasy hair
A bit of dialogue
• “Poor dear,” she murmured
• “Get out of my house,” he screamed
Detail the person’s appearance
• A thin woman: all action
• He wore dress clothes: a black suit and tie

15. The Strategy: Recalling Key
People
 List the people who played more than a causal role in
the event
Describe a key person: Write a brief
description of a person other than
yourself who played a major role in
the event. Name and detail a few
distinctive physical features or items
of dress. Describe in a few phrases
this person’s way of moving and
gesturing

16. The Strategy Continued: Use dialogue to
convey immediacy and drama
• Try to remember any especially
memorable comments, any unusual
choice of words, or any telling
remarks that you made or were
made to you.
• Try to partially re-create the
conversation so that readers will be
able to imagine what was going on
and how your language and the
other person’s language reveal who
you were and your relationship.
Reconstruct one important conversation

17. The Goal: Writing a Good
Conclusion
The Strategy:
Leave your readers with a sense of the overall impression
that you wanted to make about the experience.
Complete the essay for the reader; that is, give them a
sense of how it all ended for you and how you managed
your feelings, even if the encounter was never fully
resolved.

18. Conclusion
I heard some people around me breathe sighs of relief. The
captivating story about factories in China was no longer real to them. The
mood was noticeably lighter as Mr. Mustard finished the last few minutes of
class talking about how presentation is important when talking. However, I
didn’t feel the same as some of my classmates. Their feelings vanished as
soon as they heard that the story wasn’t entirely true, but I felt that just
because the parts were taken from different sources didn’t mean the
situation was different for those workers. I still felt that I was to blame for
their suffering.
Just as Katniss felt disgust for the Capitol, I felt disgust for myself.
In The Hunger Games, the districts suffer as the Capitol citizens enjoy their
extravagant lives. In real life, people in other countries suffer as a result of
people like me who like fancy electronics. Once again, I thought about
how lucky I was to have a comfortable life. Hours and hours of SAT
classes or tutoring were nothing compared to what other people my age
endured. I pictured myself talking to factory workers just as Cinna talked to
Katniss: “How despicable we must seem to you.”

19. Conclusion: The Strategy
 Try to connect your event back to your quotation in the last
paragraph.
 Consider the meaning of the experience (avoid tagging on a
moral)
 Show that the conflict was/was not fully resolved
 Contrast your remembered and current feelings and thoughts.
Pick an approach and try
writing your conclusion now!

20. Writing Tips
 Use present tense when describing the events in a
novel or film or story: “Katniss volunteers” or “Haymitch
is drinking heavily.”
 Your thesis for this paper will be the transition
sentence from the event in The Hunger Games to your
own narrative event: “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.”
 Use chronological order to tell your story.
 Use past tense to describe the event(s) in your life: “I
was camping with my family up in Yosemite.”

21. HOMEWORK
• Read: HG through chapter 9
• Post #4: finish and post your in-class writing
1. Beginning with a quotation/transitioning to your remembered event.
2. Vivid presentation of a place: Using sensory details: 643-648
3. Describe a person central to your event. Include a physical
description and gestures or behaviors.
4. Writing Dialogue.
5. Framing: beginnings and endings
• Bring: HG, SMG, and a printed copy of your Post #4 or an
electronic device on which you can access your post. Cell
phones are not acceptable for this task.