The Burger Game - Identifying Style - Reading to Write

This PowerPoint contains three versions of the game. Each is designed to support students’ study of John Steinbeck’s novella, ‘Of Mice and Men’, in the Year 11 Reading to Write unit.

Overview of ‘The Burger Game’:

• The first few slides introduce three authors and features of their writing style (one of which is John Steinbeck).
• The rest of the presentation provides quotes and students have to guess the author based on the writing style.
• Randomly scattered throughout the PowerPoint are also images of burgers from well-known takeaway restaurants (MacDonalds, KFC, Red Rooster, etc.). This allows students to draw parallels between how their brain naturally recognises style with fast food and learning to recognise style in literature.

How to play:

• Read through the opening slides as a class (where the three authors and their styles are introduced). Students take notes for each author.
• With heads on the desk, the teacher brings up the first quote. Students all open their eyes and read at the same time.
• The first student to guess the correct author gets a point. The student with the most points at the end of the game gets a prize (usually a chocolate).
• BONUS prizes: if a burger is shown on the screen, the first student that guesses correctly instantly gets a lolly/chocolate.

Whilst this game is a lot of fun, students are developing their ability to recognise author’s style and learn features of John Steinbeck’s writing ready for their study of his novella. This PowerPoint could be adapted to reflect an alternate common author (for example, replacing the Steinbeck slides with Fitzgerald information/quotes).

This is a support resource which can be used alongside a Year 11 Reading to Write unit, as it is aligned with the NSW Syllabus for Stage 6.