Lord of the Flies is much more than a story about British boys who are marooned on an island and descend into cruelty and lurid violence; it's also an examination of the social forces that can overwhelm a person's moral code and cause him to act in ways that would normally be anathema to his nature.
It's a story about the loss of innocence. And, given its arrival just after the end of World War II and the first uses of nuclear weapons on human beings, it would seem that the boys of Lord of the Flies aren't the only ones for whom innocence is now just a memory.
You can teach Lord of the Flies to students in high school and middle school both, as Golding's prose and the book's structure are straightforward. But don't let that dissuade you from teaching it — its complex symbolism and thematic concerns make it a text ripe for deep literary analysis.
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Teaching resources for Lord of the Flies:
Teaching Unit
The Teaching Unit for Lord of the Flies gives you a complete and academic unit that you can easily incorporate into your lesson plan.
By the time your students have finished the unit, they'll have completed 8 academic objectives, including analyzing symbols, examining irony, foreshadowing, and metaphor in the text, and writing about genre signifiers.
A chapter-by-chapter study guide with questions ensures students don't miss anything important, and a multiple-choice and essay test help you assess your students' knowledge.
AP* Literature Teaching Unit
The AP Literature Teaching Unit for Lord of the Flies prepares your students for the AP Literature and Composition exam while they read and analyze the text.
The study guide questions focus on matters of literary technique beyond characters, themes, and plot, and the multiple-choice and free-response essay test questions are structured like those they'll encounter on exam day.
Activity Pack
If your students are having some trouble getting into standard methods of studying literature, Activity Packs are the answer.
The Activity Pack for Lord of the Flies contains 31 activities that span the entire text, including pre-reading and wrap-up activities.
These activities help your students explore plot, themes, irony, imagery, foreshadowing, and much, much more.
Levels of Understanding
Support your students as they learn to apply higher-order thinking skills to the study of literature.
The Levels of Understanding guide for Lord of the Flies is full of questions in the five domains of a modified version of Bloom's Taxonomy: Comprehension, Reader Response, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation.
Each domain leads into the next, providing essential scaffolding for students who may be less experienced with deep literary analysis.
Multiple Critical Perspectives
If you want to explore the wide world of literary theory with your students, Multiple Critical Perspective Guides are the way to go.
The Multiple Critical Perspectives Guide for Lord of the Flies contains 8 activities plus essay and class discussion questions that help your students examine Golding's novel through three critical lenses: Marxist theory, Psychoanalytical/Freudian theory, and Mythological/Archetypal theory.
Response Journal
With all the emphasis on testing and rigor these days, is there any room for just enjoying a good book anymore?
We think so. Reflecting on your feelings about characters and events can lead to deeper understandings.
The Response Journal for Lord of the Flies has 80 writing prompts that are sure to make your students think about how the book relates to their own lives.
The Response Journal also includes a multiple-choice test.
Vocabulary from Literature
Now your students can study vocabulary as they work their way through a literary text.
The Vocabulary from Literature guide for Lord of the Flies contains 28 activities that will help students learn and remember challenging words from the book.
These activities include determining synonyms, writing sentences using context clues, studying Latin and Greek roots and prefixes, and more.
A vocabulary test is also included.
Novel Test
Need a test for Lord of the Flies — and need it today?
Download our Novel Test and you'll have it at your fingertips immediately.
The multiple-choice and matching questions are mostly plot-based, while the essay questions ask students to analyze symbols and themes in the novel.
Complete Teacher's Kit
The Complete Teacher's Kit for Lord of the Flies includes:
- Teaching Unit
- Activity Pack
- Response Journal
- Headlines posters
. . . For less than you'd pay if you bought them separately!
Digital resources:
Lead-Ins to Literature
The Lead-Ins to Literature PowerPresentation for Lord of the Flies is loaded with information on the novel's sociopolitical context and literary elements, including allegory, symbol, point of view, and theme.
It's a great way to introduce your students to this seminal work of 20th-century British literature.
Potentially disturbing images on some slides may make those slides more suitable for mature viewers. We advise discretion.
*AP, Advanced Placement, and the Advanced Placement program are registered trademarks of The College Board, which was not involved in the production of, and does not support, these products.