Lord of the Flies intro idea

by Amy Miller, M.S.

The first day of the unit on Lord of the Flies- an exercise of survival

According to class size, I lay out two scissors, two rulers, two rolls of masking tape, one roll of scotch tape, and three magic markers. As they come in, I wordlessly hand them a half a sheet of paper. When they sit down, I explain that the sheet is their life. They are all stranded on an island together. To survive, they must use the magic marker and the circumference of a roll of tape to trace two circles. They also need to use the ruler to trace three straight lines for a triangle. They need the scissors to cut everything out. They must use the scotch tape to tape it all together as I demonstrate. You give time according to class size. For a group of thirty, I give them three minutes. It is impossible for all of them to live unless they work together and form an assembly line. NOTE: This has only happened once in my career. Most times, many run and horde the tools others need to survive. Others never even get out of their seats. Analyze the results with the kids. You will see kids hide things, barter, try to cheat, argue, and some never move from their chair if they think it looks too complicated. Put it in terms of the need to survive in Lord of the Flies and the different approaches people take. The kids love it. You have to be OK with chaos for a few minutes, but it perfectly illustrates survival of the fittest? Pushiest? Loudest?

Use this quick project as an intro for students before reading The Lord of the Flies. It gets them involved physically and emotionally.