Reading Frankenstein with my seniors is probably one of the highlights of my career thus far. Going into the unit, I knew I had to find the perfect Frankenstein activity.
Better yet? I found not one Frankenstein activity but five favorites. And I want to share them with you.
A General Overview of my Class and Unit
Before I dive I find you the perfect Frankenstein activity, it might be helpful to tell you a little bit about my class.
To start, Frankenstein falls within our British Literature curriculum. It’s an elective at our district. This means students do not have to take the course but might opt to.
Also, it’s a semester-long course. I met these kids in September, and we’ll part ways in January.
And of my 16-kid class, 15 of them are seniors. I have one awesome junior who was able to work this class into her schedule.
When planning my Frankenstein unit, I carved out about 8 weeks total to cover the text. This includes building in time for the culminating Frankenstein activity: their assessment.
The Reading Schedule within our Frankenstein Unit
I could find a different Frankenstein activity to cover more than an entire semester’s worth of lessons. But, the truth is, with a limited timeframe, our minutes are precious. And limited.
So before we even tackled our first Frankenstein activity, I made sure my students understood they would do the majority of their reading outside of class.
At my district, we follow block scheduling. On average, I see my classes once every two days. When I assign chapters to read in British Literature, I’m cognizant of how long it’ll be before I see them again. If a weekend stands between us and our next class, I’ll assign a bit more.
On average, I assigned about two chapters to read per night. If students read the assigned chapters outside of class, that set us up for success when it came to the next day’s Frankenstein activity.
A Typical Day within our Frankenstein Unit
Each class began with a warm-up. A half dozen times or so, I would quiz students on the previous night’s reading. Other times, I would have them pair up or otherwise interact with movement.
Depending on the planned Frankenstein activity, we would then transition into the main part of the lesson. In a typical 84-minute class period, this would take us about 40 minutes.
Finally, we’d end class with a summarizer. This could be an exit slip or short open-ended response. Whatever I could draw up to help assess students’ understanding of our Frankenstein activity for the day.
If time remained, I would allow students to start reading the assigned chapters for homework.
Finding the Perfect Frankenstein Activity
Truly, just one of these six activities would be a great start if you’re looking for inspiration in your classroom. But I don’t have just one Frankenstein activity. I’m more than willing to share a half dozen!
Introductory Digital Breakout Activity
On the first day of the unit, I started with this Frankenstein activity: a digital breakout activity.
I used AI to write three informational nonfiction articles for me. Each related to our upcoming unit: Mary Shelley (biography); the Romantic Age (an overview); and Art in the Romantic Age.
Students had to carefully read each article. For this Frankenstein activity, I highly encouraged taking careful notes using a pencil and highlighter.
When they thought they read the article closely enough, they turned their sights to the Google form that housed our digital breakout.
I accompanied each article with 10 multiple choice questions (again: 
AI). The combination of correct answers (i.e. ABCBAA) provided the right “combination” to break out of the first stage of this Frankenstein activity.
Once they successfully cracked that code, they could move on.
Other tasks within this breakout included other articles with multiple choice questions, riddles, a crossword puzzle, and Rebus puzzles just for fun.
To say my upper-level seniors were challenged by this Frankenstein activity would be an understatement. It was definitely engaging and rigorous!
And worthwhile: I treated the winner to a free beverage of their choice from our local coffee shop.
The Myth of Prometheus
It’s no secret how heavily Mary Shelley was influenced by the myth of Prometheus. If you aren’t familiar, here’s a rundown.
In Greek mythology, Prometheus defies Zeus, the king of the gods, by stealing fire. Prometheus gives this gift to humans, for whom he has a major soft spot.
Prometheus finds several ways to trick Zeus. Ultimately, though, Prometheus meets a brutal, eternal punishment. He is bound to a rock and forever doomed to have an eagle peck out his liver.
Thematic Ties Between Frankenstein and Prometheus
Thematically, Prometheus and Victor Frankenstein share intense qualities. They both are curious to learn. And they both want to give powerful gifts to humanity. But each man pushes his powers and crosses the threshold of what is acceptable.
Both beg the question: is knowledge power or is knowledge dangerous? Or is it a bit of both?
Making a Frankenstein Activity Out of Prometheus
These are great questions to ask of your students in a Frankenstein activity based on this Greek myth.
For my students, I had them closely read (again, armed with highlighters) the myth of Prometheus.
We timed this Frankenstein activity around Chapter 7, or shortly after Frankenstein brings his creature to life. Immediately, he is horrified and repulsed by his creation. He seemingly realizes instantly that he played with fire, so to speak. And he lost.
But what my students do with the two stories is complete a guided graphic organizer. Along the left-hand side of their worksheet, I offered suggested similarities between the two texts. Those included Epimetheus and Henry Clerval. Also, Athena and Waldman.
Outside of characters, students also track similar motifs in this Frankenstein activity. Those include taking risks and fear as well as creators’ intentions.
Students worked independently or in pairs. I set a timer to keep them on track. Then we took a good 10 minutes or so to share out our findings as a large group.
This is a great Frankenstein activity because you can tailor it to your students’ needs. You can use AI to increase the difficulty of the myth. And you can change up the similarities between the two stories on the graphic organizer. If you really want to challenge your students, you can remove the guided hints.
If you’re looking for a ready-to-go resource, check out my activity.
Frankenstein Activity: “Pass the Chalk”
Another really cool Frankenstein activity I tried this unit was dubbed “Pass the Chalk.” I used it as an activator towards the middle of the book. But you could easily turn this into a longer activity.
To prepare, I drew an idea web on my chalkboard. Stemming from the main cloud in the middle were various characters, motifs, and plot events from the novel.
For example, I included Justine Moritz and Guilt. I also included William and Animation Versus Life.
The idea was to have each student take turns adding to our idea web. Once one student had written something down, they passed the chalk to the next person.
To ensure quality, I laid a few ground rules. First, no one could return to the board until every student had their first turn. Secondly, no one could add more than two branches from one of the ideas.
In the end, I was blown away by the quality of student responses. And I couldn’t believe how much they loved the activity. Even my most reluctant learners were chomping at the bit to be the first one to write their idea on the board. It’s funny how something as seemingly old school as chalk can really pique students’ interest in this digital age!
This is definitely a Frankenstein activity I’ll be using year after year.
Milton and Shelley: A Match Made in Heaven – Or Maybe Hell?
Another pivotal text for Mary Shelley was John Milton’s epic poem “Paradise Lost.”
If you’re familiar with the poem, though, you know there’s no reasonable way to read that entire text within the constraints of one Frankenstein activity.
So I got creative.
I put together for students quick summaries of each of the poem’s ten books. Then I directed students to read those summaries, looking for the strongest similarities between Milton’s work and Shelley’s Frankenstein.
My students chose to do this independently, but you could easily adapt it into partner work. Or even a teacher-led small group or large group task.
Once they read the summaries, their worksheet required them to track the most meaningful similarities.
And my favorite part of this Frankenstein activity? Students had to tell me who they felt was Shelley’s intended parallel to Satan. Was it Victor or the creature?
This served as the main Frankenstein activity for that day’s lesson. It took us about 35 to 40 minutes to complete. It’s another activity that could easily adapt into a longer task.
If this Frankenstein activity sounds like it would work well in your classroom (and it will!), check it out here.
Socratic Seminar
A tried and true method for a text as powerful as Frankenstein is the Socratic seminar. For this Frankenstein activity, we included ours a little more than halfway through the novel.
After students were assigned to read Chapters 14 to 17 for homework, they came in to class prepared to discuss major questions surrounding the events in those pages.
Ahead of time, I offered students the chance to prepare. I let them know ahead of time these would be our discussion questions.
- Are we born “blank slates” or are certain characteristics predetermined? What evidence does Mary Shelley give to tell us how she feels?
- If you were a lawyer, how would you both defend and convict the creature of killing William?
- After being rejected by the cottagers, does the creature’s time in the wilderness better prepare him for the ways of the world? Or does it set him up for failure?
- Why should Victor Frankenstein acquiesce to the creature’s request for a female companion? Why should he refuse to complete this task?
Overview and Expectations
Before we started this Frankenstein activity, I covered with students my expectations. First, I put a 30-minute minimum on the time. If they talked more than that, awesome. But we would need to spend at least this long conversing.
Next, I made sure students knew my high expectations in terms of respecting one another. They were to take turns speaking. And they had to listen quietly as others spoke.
Finally, I shared some teacherly insight with them. I shared the goal of a Socratic seminar is for the teacher to take a purely observant role. It was perfectly acceptable – and desired – for them to control the conversation. They didn’t have to raise their hands. Or wait to be called on. Truly, they were in control of the entire conversation.
Of course, our discussion was so rich I couldn’t help but jump in! And occasionally they reverted to old habits and raised their hands for me. But all in all, I was blown away by the quality of their response.
And my time minimum? They blew that out of the water. I finally ended our Frankenstein activity after more than 60 minutes of quality talks.
Want to know more? Check out my exact Socratic seminar here.
Tracking Frankenstein
The final Frankenstein activity I’d like to share with you is perfect for the end of the book. By then, let’s be honest. You’ve probably exhausted all your best ideas. And you might be struggling to find something new and engaging.
Well, either version of this Frankenstein activity is perfect.
Here’s another digital breakout activity. The idea is that students have to retrace the many (over 30!) locations in the novel. This ready-to-go digital breakout activity even has multiple hints built in.
Honestly, without the hints, I’d even struggle. So I suggest offering some guidance as far as where students can find the answers. And, if students miss it on the first shot, I offer another hint. Usually it was the first letter of the answer but sometimes it was something else. For example, for Paris, the hint is “city of love.”
You can make this even more engaging by making it a race. Whoever breaks out first is the winner. Please enjoy the extra satirical victory image of Frankenstein for those who are victorious.
But if your students or you aren’t feeling techy, try this instead. It’s a ready-to-go printout that achieves the same purpose. Students first describe what happens at nine of the most important locations. Then they track those on the map of Europe. Suggestion: give them stickers to mark the locations. You know how much they love stickers!
Concluding Thoughts
Hopefully you got some inspiration from at least one Frankenstein activity in this post. Mary Shelley’s novel can seem daunting. After all, it’s more than 24 chapters of rich, life-changing content that continues to inspire more than two centuries later.
But no matter which Frankenstein activity (or activities) you settle on, you can’t go wrong. They’re all equally engaging, one-of-a-kind, and bound to make an impression with your students.
