Ender's Game Activities

The internet is buzzing with news of an upcoming adaptation of the beloved sci-fi/young adult classic, Ender's Game.  Since the 1980's, readers have relished the story of how a gifted, young strategist faced many challenges while trying to save the world from the threat of an alien invasion, and save himself from many dangers at the brutal, military space academy that's training him to become a leader.  While the movie is in the beginning stages of the filmmaking process, your students can read and enjoy the novel now.  Here are a few activities you can give your students for an independent study, or a classroom unit on Ender's Game:

• Here is a pretty thorough lesson plan revolving around the novel.  It includes objectives, comprehension questions by chapter, assessment projects, and a complete schedule and grading rubric for all activities. 
• This is a guide put together by starscapebooks.  It contains rich, thoughtful discussion questions, and good writing and research activities for themes presented in the book.
• Tiffany Stoddard created an anticipation guide for the book.  I enjoy this activity, and it's pretty simple if you want to make your own.  Basically, you take themes from the novel, create broad "agree/disagree" statements related to those themes (the more controversial or extreme, the better), and have students line up or arrange themselves around the room based on how they feel about the statement.  It's always good to have students revisit their initial thoughts about the statements after they've read the book.  After reading, how might their thoughts change about the statement that "destroying a species is never right"?
• Here is a list of activities organized by Bloom's taxonomy.
• Create biographical poems (biopoems) for the characters.
• Have students create a book trailer on video, a Glogster poster for themes in the book, or a MyFakeWall page for the characters.