The Hunger Games: A Cross-Curricular Project

Since being involved in resilience I hear many varied excerpts of books aimed at our pupils. One of the things that surprised me about this was just how few of these popular books I had read. Last Easter I decided to read The Hunger Games, as I had seen a trailer for the first film and my interest was piqued. Throughout the novel I kept making references to real world situations and couldn't escape some of the geographical themes that were explored in the book.

I decided to investigate the possibility of a cross-curricular project and was pleased when colleagues in the English Department shared my enthusiasm. Following several planning meetings with Amy Dare, we had roughed out areas that each subject could cover and identified themes that complimented both the Geography and English curriculums.

The dystopian style of the novel was a particular point of interest as so much of the geography that pupils pick up from current affairs is focussed on natural disaster and conflict. During the lessons pupils were able to draw on references to Syria, the Ukraine and Hurricane Katrina. It was pleasing to see that both the boys and girls were keen to read more about the story behind our scheme of work, a number of the Year Eight pupils even showed me their copies of the book they had selected for reading in resilience sessions.

The assessment element of this scheme of work was significant in proving, learning linked to popular fiction is an excellent way to make the geography relevant to pupils. In the lead up to the assessment we had studied natural and built environments that felt "dystopian" as places had been abandoned or ravaged by natural disasters. Pupils understood that dystopian novels combined difficult elements such as political problems and a lack or resources. To make the assessment as accessible as possible I decided to give pupils the choice between writing their assessment or debating it. Year Eight pupils have experience of using "talk" as a vehicle for assessment as the Geography department uses this in Year Seven and Year Eight topics the pupils had already studied. Many pupils chose to talk, whilst a smaller proportion were seated at the edge of the classroom at tables with paper. I am always impressed at the mature approach pupils adopt when debating. Very few behaviour sanctions were needed as pupils were engaged in listening to one another and looking for their opportunity to add to the debate.

For colleagues interested in trialling a talk assessment, I would recommend creating a tick column criteria sheet as this helps with recording how well the pupils perform and is essential to provide individual written feedback. I have generated a few short hand codes, that used along with some key words helps me to assess and level the pupils. Finally, if you are considering this type of activity but are uncertain of how pupils will respond, I would say that so long as pupils are given preparation time to script their ideas, on the whole each of my classes thoroughly enjoyed this change of activity.