10 English – Creative Writing inspired by Hunger Games – Writing from the point of view of Haymitch

A PPT designed for use in a 10 English creative writing unit. Students will eventually be producing diary entries from the point of view of a marginalised character in SE Hinton’s The Outsiders. This lesson was taught at the end of the previous term and we used Hunger Games as a practice.

I began by going through the learning intentions and success criteria for this new topic. We reviewed what a journal entry is. We talked about how for this assessment they will be embodying a character so this adds an additional challenge. They have to think about how they will show this character’s values and beliefs.

There are some questions about what students remember about characterisation (the different ways characters are constructed). I then explained 5 methods which are used to create characters in a text.

We then zoomed in on the character they selected to do a co-constructed entry on: Haymitch. I asked what types of things we need to know / invent about Haymitch in order to write diary entries from his point of view.

I then talked through my planning process for the following categories:
• His backstory
• His role in society
• Who / what / where is important to him
• His vices / weaknesses
• His strengths
• His opinions about The Hunger Games and The Capitol
• His thoughts about Peeta and Katniss
• How he speaks (common word choices) etc.
• His beliefs and reactions to events in the games

Then I spoke about how to structure diary entries.

• Describe your setting (where is your character when they are writing)
• Describe what happened (Recollections) + Reactions (making VABs clear)
• Strategies for moving forward (plans, decisions, goals, hopes)

There was a checklist for what we needed to use.

We then planned what point in the story we wanted to write Haymitch’s diary about. There were some prompts on the slide to guide our discussion.