TEMPLATE: BRAIN-COMPATIBLE ACTIVITY (INDUCTIVE)

Name of activity: Allusion Achievements

Purpose: The goal of this task is to help students identify allusions in literature to better understand their role in
figurative language. The activity is loosely modeled off of a word search and is designed to give students an
opportunity to activate their prior knowledge about literature, figures, places, and people that texts might allude to.

What students will do:

1. Individually, students will review four excerpts of text on a handout that will be provided. Each excerpt will
contain 2 to 5 allusions that refer to well-known people, stories, places, or pieces of literature (to the Bible, to
the legend of Achilles or the Trojan Horse, to Shakespeare, to well-known events in history, etc.).
2. In small groups, students will circle as many allusions as they can find and label them with a) the thing the text
alludes to, and b) how it functions to create meaning in the text. The document should look like this:

3. Students will count up the number of allusions they were able to find.
4. Teacher reveal how many allusions there were total in the list and assess how many and which allusions
students were able to find and identify. Students will receive two points for finding and identifying allusions,
and one for just finding allusions. The group with the most points gets a prize (candy).
5. Teacher will reveal the list of allusions and what they refer to. Students should take a picture or write down
the items on the list they missed.
6. Students will write an exit ticket with a takeaway of this activity (I anticipate that students will write that they
never knew about some of the allusions, or that learning about them might help them understand text
better).

Why this task is inductive and brain-compatible: This activity engages students in a “word-search” style competition
to activate their knowledge of well-known people, stories, places, or pieces of literature in a format that allows them
to collaborate with teammates to earn points. The activity plays to the competitive nature of teenagers and
encourages high engagement with an incentive. It is designed to be fun and hands on—students can assess their own
knowledge individually and share their knowledge during collaboration. The task is inductive because it is mostly
student-led with occasional guidance from the instructor, moving from practice into theory. The teacher will provide
the answers at the end in the format of a tool that students can use while doing readings independently or as a class.