The Handmaid’s Tale Unit Plan, Hulu Series Connections and Current Events

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Use the hit Hulu series and hot topic current events to teach The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood. This unit includes every single thing you need to teach this terrifying, captivating and mind blowing book. I’ve loved this book for 25 years, taught it for 10 and now I’ve adapted the whole unit to be used with the TV series and what’s happening in the world right now. This unit includes:

• Daily lessons for each chapter
• Current event connections ripped from the headlines!
• A link to the full text online
• Daily “Do Now” personal journal prompts tailored to each chapter’s subject
• Exit tickets that align with the opening and content of the day
• Questions by chapter that prepare students for the formative and final written assignments
• NEW: Exact time stamp cues for showing scenes from the series, with episode and minute marks for every chapter! (MAJOR time saver)
• Instructions for how to use “reader’s theater” to make the novel come alive
• Reader’s theater “cast list” for each chapter 
• Daily online review quiz-games, with answer keys. (Kahoot) They are graded automatically and can be downloaded to a spreadsheet for your grading records. Easy!
• 5 ongoing smaller writing assessments called “Argument Papers”, which are complete assignments including resource articles (current events) in a ready-to-print packet format with rubrics. 
• Final paper including 8 essay question options and a rubric. I’ve revised these over the years, and they make for some compelling student work!

My students love this unit and consistently make insightful connections to the world today. They demonstrate improved writing skills, show close-reading skills and practice in-depth literary analysis. Don’t spend your time coming up with questions, finding where the scenes are in the show, searching for news articles, and formatting handouts! This cohesive, highly engaging and clearly structured unit on a haunting novel will have your students engaging in literary analysis with glee!