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 Hunger Games:
Their Stories
 Katniss
 Gale Hawthorne
 Peeta Mellark
 Prim Everdeen
 Mrs. Everdeen
 Rue
 Haymitch Abernathy
 Cinna
 Effie Trinket

5. 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.

6. 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).

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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?

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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

14. 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.

15. 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.”

16. 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!

17. 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: “Katniss‟s mother‟s complete breakdown
reminds me of what happened to my aunt.” Or
“Katniss distrusts Peeta even though most of his
actions should make her trust him – I can relate.”
 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.”

18. 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
• Study: Vocab test next class (Chapters 1-4)
• 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.