Engaging Activities for Teaching Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild is just one of those books that sticks with you long after you’ve turned the last page. There’s this raw, magnetic allure in the story of Chris McCandless, a young man who gave up everything to live in the Alaskan wilderness and paid the ultimate price for his choices.

Into the Wild has this magic about it that captivates even the most reluctant readers. It’s a narrative that transcends time and place and invites students to think deeply about life, purpose, and the paths we choose. It’s contemporary take on American Transcendentalism gives students a fresh perspective on classic themes and sparks powerful discussions about adventure, risk-taking, family dynamics, and non-conformity. Into the Wild can be a challenging read, but it’s one of those texts that pushes readers out of their comfort zones.

If you’re teaching Into the Wild and ready to plan an engaging unit that transcends the standards, you’re in the right place. I am here to help you craft an experience that will help students explore the meaning of happiness and life, contemplate the Transcendental pull of nature, examine risk-tasking, and reflect on their own identities along the way.

Ready to start planning that journey? Here are some of my favorite activities for making your Into the Wild unit engaging and relevant for your teen readers:

“ARE YOU A TRANSCENDENTALIST?” PERSONALITY QUIZ

Into the Wild is full of connections to Transcendentalism, so it’s crucial to ensure students understand key Transcendental tenets before reading. My favorite way to introduce or review Transcendentalism before reading Into the Wild is an “Are You A Transcendentalist?” magazine-style personality quiz. This activity makes lofty Transcendental concepts accessible, sparks conversations and connections, and hooks students before reading. With background knowledge of Transcendentalism, students will be prepared to analyze all the Transcendental allusions and study Into the Wild as an example of modern-day Transcendentalism.

You can find this fun quiz in my Transcendentalism bundle HERE, as well as my complete Into the Wild novel unit HERE.

PRE-READING LEARNING STATIONS

Once your students have a grasp of Transcendentalism, it’s time for pre-reading! For me, pre-reading looks like piquing readers’ curiosity, building background knowledge, and sparking some juicy discussions…all via learning stations. Here’s how I structure learning stations to set students up for success before reading Into the Wild:

  • Station 1: Hook students with the movie trailer! At this station, students will record what they notice from the trailer and use their observations to make inferences and predictions. This station is the start of all the juicy discussions students will have throughout the novel!
  • Station 2: Set the stage with an excerpt from the Author’s Note. Here, students discuss their first impressions of the book and explore Krakauer’s motivations for writing the novel. This sets the stage for more conversations about Krakauer’s choices and purpose in writing (which is a big focus of our unit).
  • Station 3: Meet McCandless! Think of this station as an intriguing, slightly cryptic meet-and-greet where students extract meaning from an excerpt McCandless scrawled on a piece of wood during his travels. This close-reading task gets students curious about McCandless and what drove him to abandon society for the wild.
  • Station 4: Spark some debate about essential questions! At this station, students read a few of McCandless’s quotes about adventure, conformity, and happiness, and then use these excerpts as the springboard for some healthy debate.
  • Station 5: Make meaningful connections! Finally, students examine an excerpt from the Author’s Note that contrasts McCandless’s pursuit of happiness with the traditional American dream. Students will analyze the contrast and then reflect on their own worldview and definition of happiness.

You can check out these learning stations HERE or in my bundle of activities for teaching Into the Wild HERE.

BELL-RINGERS/QUICKWRITES TO SPARK DISCUSSION

After all of the juicy convos you spark with the learning stations, you’ll want to keep the critical thinking and discussion going throughout the entire text. One of the best ways to keep readers engaged and reflecting on essential questions is with quick, thought-provoking questions and daily writing at the start of class. Whether you call these beginning of class exercises bell-ringers, journals, or quickwrites, dedicating the first 5 minutes of the period to thinking and writing will deepen students’ understanding of the story and enrich your unit.

For our Into the Wild unit, I created daily prompts to spark critical thinking, connection, analysis, and evaluation. From debating if “Slab City” is the “last free place in America” to examining the impact of relationships on identity, each prompt encourages students to dig deeper into the text and its essential questions. These daily writing exercises keep students accountable for reading, help them process the text, and spark meaningful class conversations that will enrich your unit. You can find all of these bell-ringers HERE or in my Into the Wild unit bundle HERE.

POSTCARD TO CARINE ACTIVITY

Chris McCandless’s journey was epic, and I’ve been lucky enough to see some of the very sights he describes in Into the Wild. But it can be challenging for students to visualize and appreciate the settings if you don’t give them a chance to really explore the stops on Chris’s journey. This is why I love using the power of Google Maps and an engaging character postcard activity to bring the setting to life. This activity invites students to step in Chris McCandless’s shoes and write a postcard to his sister, Carine, from one of the pivotal locations on his journey. Using an interactive map with pinpointed locations, students can actually explore the exact spots Chris visited through Google Instant Street View. 

Not only does this activity bring the setting to life, but it helps readers demonstrate their understanding of Chris’s values, emotions, and relationships. By exploring Chris’s complex feelings and motivations, students will practice perspective-taking, textual analysis, and creative writing. You can find this lesson in my unit bundle HERE.

ANALYZING EPIGRAPHS & ALLUSIONS

All the allusions in Into the Wild = an English teacher’s dream. There’s just so much to analyze, from the thought-provoking epigraphs before each chapter, to the stories of similar adventurers and the references to Transcendentalists like Emerson and Thoreau. To take advantage of these connections, I designed exercises that pair excerpts from Emerson, Thoreau, and Tolstoy with quotes from Into the Wild.

For example, students analyze excerpts from Transcendental works by Emerson, Thoreau, and Tolstoy, exploring how these allusions reflect McCandless’s journey and ideals. Questions like “How does this excerpt reflect McCandless’s journey?” and “Why does McCandless burn his money, and why would it make Thoreau/Tolstoy proud?” prompt students to connect the text to Transcendental thinkers and the tenets of this movement.

I also challenge students to explore the epigraphs that Krakauer places before each chapter. “Why do you think Krakauer chose this epigraph? and “How do this connect to Chris and his story?” are great starting points for this kind of analysis.

For resources to help your students notice and analyze these rich parallels and references, check out my Into the Wild resouce vault HERE.

TRANSCENDENTALISM ESCAPE ROOM

With all the allusions woven throughout the story, it only makes sense to bring in Emerson and Thoreau to make sure students Thoreau-ly 😉 understand the connections to Transcendentalism. One way to review Transcendentalism is through an engaging escape room that turns lofty Transcendental concepts into student-centered challenges.

This escape room is a great way to mix up your unit on Into the Wild, expose students to Transcendental texts, and give students the background knowledge they need to make connections to McCandless’s story.

In the first challenge, students match quotes that embody Transcendentalist tenets to specific principles. This sets the stage for deeper exploration in the subsequent task, where students analyze literary devices used in key passages. Another task challenges students with multiple-choice questions that encourage critical thinking about the texts. The final task is the most challenging: literary analysis through a short answer response, drawing evidence directly from Emerson’s “Nature”.

You can check out this print, digital, and hybrid escape room HERE. (Please note: This is not included in the Into the Wild bundle.)

SOUNDTRACK ANALYSIS

If you’re not bringing the film soundtrack into your unit, you’re missing out! Eddie Vedder composed these songs specifically for the film adaptation of Into the Wild, so they are rich with thematic connections. Analyzing the soundtrack is a great way to mix up your novel unit, so I always save this lesson for about halfway through the text to keep things fresh and prevent the monotony that can creep in mid-unit. You could devote a whole lesson to music analysis, but I like to sneak it in via learning stations. At the music station, each student picks a different song from the soundtrack and listens closely for connections to McCandless’s journey. Students analyze and cite specific lyrics, exploring how the songs reflect the experiences, emotions, and themes of Into the Wild.

Students love this chance to pop in headphones, chill out, and listen to music, and I love that it tricks them into doing some serious analysis. It’s one of the few times I can get my teens to cite evidence without any complaints. 😉 If that doesn’t convince you to try this, I don’t know what will! You can find this activity in my Chapters 10-13 Learning Stations HERE or in my complete unit bundle HERE.

TIMELINE/SUMMARY BOOKMARKS & JIGSAW GROUP WORK

The non-linear structure of Into the Wild can make it challenging for students to follow along, but it’s nothing that you can’t fix with a little scaffolding! I make the book more accessible with bookmarks that students complete after each chapter. On one side of the bookmark, students record significant events, and on the other side, they summarize each chapter. This dual approach supports comprehension and helps students out during class discussions, but it also prepares students to analyze the purpose of key sections and chapters at the end of the book.

When students finish reading, I want them to analyze Krakauer’s structure and the book as a whole. To review the entire text, I divide students into groups and assign each group a different chapter. Groups are responsible for summarizing their section and analyzing its purpose in the text. This jigsaw-style exercise helps students understand the narrative structure, Krakauer’s storytelling techniques, and the development of Krakauer’s purpose. Doing this in groups makes it much more engaging than a traditional review packet.

You can find these resources in my Into the Wild unit bundle HERE.

SPEED DISCUSSION

At the end of a novel, especially one as powerful as Into the Wild, the idea of wrapping everything up nicely can be daunting. There are so many things left to discuss by the end of the book, but before you try to host a whole class discussion, try a speed discussion first!

This engaging approach to discussion allows for lively exchanges between students as they explore key themes and ideas from the novel in a structured but interactive way. Before class begins, you’ll arrange desks in pairs, resembling a speed dating setup. Each pair of desks will be equipped with topic cards with thought-provoking questions related to Into the Wild, ranging from analyzing Krakauer’s purpose in writing the book to evaluating McCandless’s motivations and the narrative structure.

During the speed dating discussion, students rotate through different partners and topics, discussing a new question with each rotation. This format not only keeps discussions fresh but also encourages students to be exposed to diverse perspectives. As students move from one topic to another, they jot down notes to capture the most compelling aspects of their conversations. This can include a newfound understanding, a surprising revelation, a lingering question, etc. It’s a great way to help students process the text, consider different perspectives, and prepare for a final assessment or Socratic Seminar.

You can find this speed discussion resource HERE or discounted in my unit bundle for Into the Wild HERE.

SOCRATIC SEMINAR

Into the Wild is a text that lends itself well to a Socratic Seminar, a student-led discussion where students craft their own questions and discuss them as a whole class (without the teacher leading the conversation). While I give students freedom to explore their own questions, our Socratic seminar naturally focuses on whether Chris McCandless was justified in leaving his family and venturing into the wild without a trace. This is an essential question we explore throughout the text, especially while reading Chapters 11-13 of Into the Wild, which provide background information on Chris’s upbringing, family, and pre-Alaskan life. After these chapters, students track details in a graphic organizer and then write a well-developed response to the question, supporting their analysis with textual evidence. When students finish reading, they return to this question during our Socratic Seminar. By this time, students have passionate opinions about McCandless’s choices, and they are prepared to defend their analysis during the seminar.

If you’re tired of assigning essays or passing out tests at the end of every novel unit, a Socratic Seminar is a breath of fresh air and a more meaningful assessment. It’s incredibly rewarding to watch students craft questions, cite evidence, articulate their thoughts, and challenge their peers’ perspectives while you watch the discussion evolve from the sidelines.

You can read more about setting up and facilitating Socratic Seminars HERE or find the resource I use for any text (including Into the Wild) HERE.

I hope all of these ideas help you bring new life into your Into the Wild unit. To check out all of the resources, activities, and lessons mentioned in this blog post, click HERE or on the image below. Please note that the Socratic Seminar and escape room resources are separate resources. 🙂 Let me know if you have any questions about these resources in the comments!

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