Utilizing Scavenger Hunts to Engage Students in Assigned Readings
Alison Lowenstein, Hostos Community College
Bio
Alison Lowenstein is a Lecturer in the English Department at Hostos Community College. She’s the faculty advisor to the Hostos Writing Center and The Hostos English Club. A former book editor, her writing has been published in The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, McSweeney’s, and other publications.
Course Setting
Hostos Lincoln Academy is an early college program that enables students to graduate from high school with an associates degree. I had the opportunity to teach a two-part sequence: Creative Writing in Fall 2025 and Creative Nonfiction in Spring 2026 to the same cohort of students.
Problem of Practice
How can I increase the number of students who deeply comprehend and fully complete complex assigned readings, rather than superficially interacting with them?Strategy
I implemented a pedagogical strategy using scavenger hunt worksheets. The two worksheets asked students to isolate specific references within a braided essay (which is an essay that combines two or more strands/ideas that share a common theme) and a graphic memoir.
These scavenger hunts were scaffolded reading assignments and were arranged with text dependent questions that went from simple to complex. They were designed to lighten the processing of the students’ cognitive load.
The scavenger hunts tasked students with identifying literary concepts and craft techniques used in these forms of creative non-fiction, and each student was asked to share their findings with the class. This scavenger hunt was done in-class and the activity took 30 minutes and was followed by a deep discussion about the reading.
Documentation
Tommy Orange “Trees of Mystery” Scavenger Hunt
This is the first scavenger hunt conducted with the class. It asks students to identify strands in a braided essay. This scaffolded assignment helped students to understand how one constructs a braided essay and how each strand impacts the other.
Alison Bechdel “Fun Home” Scavenger Hunt
This is the second scavenger hunt conducted with the class. It tasked students with close reading and identifying literary and visual techniques. This hunt focused on one chapter of the memoir, which was a longer reading than the previous braided essay.
Both scavenger hunts were prewriting activities that were designed to help students comprehend the readings without having to focus on writing about them.
Measuring Impact
Measuring Scavenger Hunt Impact
The students filled out this anonymous survey. 33% of the students found both scavenger hunts “helpful” in improving their understanding of the reading.
Analysis
This deep reading activity framed as a “scavenger hunt” had students actively engage with the text. Each student shared their work and had thoughtful responses. It was a successful activity because every student engaged in the class discussion.
However, when the students filled out an anonymous survey about these two activities, they weren’t as engaged as I perceived. For instance, 42% of the students felt creative writing prompts based on the assigned creative works helped them to better understand the readings. However, these scavenger hunt activities asked the students to take a deep look at each reading and to decipher specific elements, which helps students to develop advanced skills and requires the student to fully engage with the text.
There were different requirements for each scavenger hunt, but both fostered student comfort and creativity. I noticed the students had a deeper understanding of both the braided essay and the chapter of the graphic memoir. The anonymous nature of the survey did give me a better insight to their reactions to these prewriting activities, but I still witnessed the results in the classroom.
I might introduce this activity earlier in the semester. Establishing a challenging in-class reading activity at the start of the class helps students develop deeper levels of engagement.
Recommendation
This is a great alternative to group work and ending the activity with students sharing their favorite sentence from the literary work is a powerful ending for an in-class scaffolded pre-writing, reading assignment. I watched as students heard their classmates fearlessly share the sentences they had chosen from the braided essay, and it created a memorable poetic moment.