The Hunger Games: An Instructional Guide for Literature

This is a 72-page guide for how teachers can teach about the Hunger Games. It's divided into an number of sections including information on::

How to use the literature guide.

Lots of emphasis on word meaning.

Reading ability does not necessarily equate to writing ability.

State standards. (These are for college and career readiness.)

National assessment of educational progress.

(Herein is where a problem lies. The book is geared to state standards for reading ability and being read to take college courses. I've looked at the reading scores for some high schools I know about, including one that I taught at, and the scores are so low they are shocking.

Around 66% of students do not meet the expected reading levels. Scores for 2019 actually went down from 2017 scores. I checked some schools results in my state and this is what I found. The school I taught at stood at 22% reading comprehension in the latest test. The best one of the ones I knew about got 75% which was the highest. All but one tested below state standards. Math scores were even worse. The question arises, then, is whether or not students perform at such low levels of comprehension will be able to understand books like The Hunger Games, even with the use of this guide, or whether they will be completely lost.

There is the concept that if you set the expectations high the students will rise to them but, from the scores I've seen, that doesn't seem to work. To make matters worse the students who tend to have the lower scores have fallen even further behind the ones that have at least decent scores on the tests.

In my own opinion all these standards are really used for are political purposes at all levels. It's done to put things down on paper to make it appear that the adults are really doing something about the problem but nothing is actually really getting done, and it needs to be done without a load of fancy committees but by people who will look at the situation, talk to students and teachers rather than administrators and find out what can be done on a practical basis.)

This guide really seems geared to seeing if students can really understand what is going on in the book and if they can express that understanding by answering thought-provoking questions. If a teacher is allowed to take the time necessary to this this properly then I think this type of book could turn out to be a valuable resource.