Put students inside the problem before they meet it in the text.

This six-resource bundle gives secondary ELA students a reason to think, argue, make decisions, and live with the consequences before plot knowledge tells them whom to support.

Each activity is built around a different literary problem. Students may design a society, decide what family loyalty requires, navigate social status, limit political power, or determine what a ruler is still owed after giving authority away. Once reading begins, those choices become a shared reference point for discussion and analysis.

INCLUDED IN THIS BUNDLE

Six complete pre-reading simulations for major secondary literature texts — each designed to get students making decisions, defending ideas, and wrestling with the text’s central conflict before reading begins.

1. STRANDED! — Lord of the Flies Survival Simulation
Students build an island society, establish leadership and rules, allocate limited resources, and respond to events that test the system they created.

Core ideas: survival, power, rules, cooperation, fear, group behavior

2. Antigone Pre-Reading Activity — Who Do You Owe?
Students work through modern ethical dilemmas involving law, loyalty, conscience, family obligation, public order, and personal safety before meeting Antigone and Creon.

Core ideas: law, loyalty, conscience, duty, civil disobedience

3. A Doll's House Pre-Reading Activity — Ethics & Moral Dilemmas
Students respond to scenarios involving secrecy, debt, forgery, loyalty, control, marriage, responsibility, and second chances before those questions become part of Nora's story.

Core ideas: ethics, obligation, autonomy, secrecy, responsibility

4. The Great Gatsby Pre-Reading Activity — Who Gets In?
Students enter a fictional social system with different levels of money, family name, connections, education, and reputation, then discover that wealth does not always buy acceptance.

Core ideas: social class, wealth, status, access, belonging

5. Julius Caesar Pre-Reading Activity — Who Should Hold Power?
Students enter a fictional republic and decide how much authority a successful and popular leader should be allowed to hold as new information raises questions about ambition, fear, and political power.

Core ideas: leadership, authority, ambition, fear, institutional limits

6. King Lear Pre-Reading Activity — Who Gets the Kingdom?
Students design a succession plan for an aging ruler who wants to give away the work of governing while retaining status, influence, privileges, and respect. Five escalating rounds force them to live with their own rules.

Core ideas: succession, authority, family obligation, loyalty, gratitude, power

WHAT MAKES THESE DIFFERENT

These are not six versions of the same anticipation guide.

Across the series, students:
• encounter the conflict before they know how it connects to the literary work
• make a real choice or build a system
• defend the principle behind that choice
• face new information that complicates their first answer
• return to the experience during or after reading

The goal is not to teach students the "right" interpretation before they read. It is to give them a meaningful position from which to enter the text.

PERFECT FOR

• Grades 9–12
• Literature
• Drama
• Novel studies
• Pre-reading
• Critical thinking
• Discussion
• Argumentation
• Student engagement
• Secondary ELA

TEXTS INCLUDED

• Lord of the Flies by William Golding
• Antigone by Sophocles
• A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
• King Lear by William Shakespeare

FLEXIBLE USE

Use the entire series across a year of secondary literature, or use only the simulations that match the texts in your curriculum.

Each included product retains its own teacher directions, student materials, pacing guidance, and included file formats.

Created by Plotting Something.