Please use the comments to share your favorite Ender's Game theme classroom activities. Talk about how you used them, how successful you felt they were, and how you might change things if you could do it again! Feel free to link to PDFs, or comment on other activities that you've tried with hints and suggestions. Check the comments to get started!
Perhaps the most important page on this blog, this area invites ALL those who have enjoyed this book to submit talking points and general discussion in the comments section.
Educators and learners both can then reference the comments and discussion when attempting to come up with unique talking points, as well as compare these discussions with some of their own.
The discussion points on this PDF are not only an excellent, free resource for your classroom, but also a great place to start the discussion in the comments!
COMMUNITY: When your class has completed the activity, invite them to scan and upload their artwork into the comments section of this blog entry! This activity is suited for all age ranges, but grades 7 to 10 may have the most fun with it!
LEARNING ABOUT DESCRIPTIVE LANGUAGE
Author Orson Scott Card uses descriptive language in order to help us understand what Ender's world looks like. He uses descriptive language so well, that thousands of fans have been able to create artwork based off of his stories.
One such example is the Ender's Game comic published by Marvel in 2008:
Ender's Game: Battle School and Ender's Game: Command School are the main comics that focus explicitly on Ender's Game. Other comics in the series expand to the other books in the series, such as Ender's Shadow.
ACTIVITY:
Before showing students any fan art or the comics, invite them to work individually or in groups to draw a scene of their choice from the book, draw a particular setting, or draw a character in his or her uniform. Let them get creative by giving them time to paint or color image, or by letting them create the image using a graphics program. After the artwork is done, consider allowing the students time to write a paragraph (or create a podcast) describing , as vividly as possible, one of the images another classmate has drawn.
FAN ART:
Consider uploading some of the student artwork to an online resource such as a class blog or fandom message board. Here are some examples of other fan art:
Here are three posters I made that you can hang in your classroom during your Ender's Game unit, or all year long! Click on the image to begin downloading an 11" by 14" 300 dpi poster that you can then take your favorite print shop, and even laminate!
I chose these for either being great quotes to discuss or just being generally memorable.
Teachers who are working on an Ender's Game unit might be pleased to learn that the film version of the book is slated to be released in theaters in November of 2013! Students who are becoming more enthralled with the series might be pleased to check out some of these sites!
OFFICIAL PRODUCTION FILM BLOG Special note: This resource has some great behind-the-scenes images and interviews from the shoot, but it's also an excellent starter point for a discussion on one of the many ways people use blogs. Ask your students: Why would anyone from the production team bother taking time to create a blog for the film? http://endersgameblog.tumblr.com/ NON-OFFICIAL BLOG Special note: This blog has been around longer than the Tumblr blog. Ask your students: What is the difference between this blog and the official production film blog? How about in terms of purpose and not just format: what are some reasons you think this blog was created that might be different from reasons why the official production blog was created? http://endersgamemovie.blogspot.com/
VIDEOS
Consider discussing with your students the purpose of the following two videos. Which do they find to be more informative?
