New free lesson plans are up for The Spellbinders by Chris Monaco, built for ELA and theatre classrooms looking for flexible, ready-to-use material.
Download the free lesson plans using the button above!
The Spellbinders is a dark fantasy thriller set at Prosper Elite Academy for Spellbinders, where the school year ends with the Culling: one student is raised to the all-powerful Supreme Council, and the least worthy are stripped of their magic and their memories. When ten students wake up trapped on an empty campus with no powers and a fiery red clock counting down, a chorus of voices tells them only one can leave alive. As the hex grows crueler, the classmates are forced to confront their worst fears and a tragedy they chose to forget.
What’s Included in the Free Lesson Plans
- Pre-reading and post-reading discussion questions centered on memory, pressure, belonging, and the choice to forget
- Character analysis activities including an official Culling evaluation, the worst fears the hex conjures, and a relationship map of all ten Spellbinders
- Cultural and historical activities connecting the play to Shakespeare’s The Tempest, real-world rites of passage like the gaokao and the quinceañera, and the long tradition of magic schools in fiction
- Creative activities including choreographing a spell, designing Prosper Academy’s crest, staging a magical effect on zero budget, and building a live soundscape for the hex’s voices
- Personal reflection prompts inviting students to consider being judged by appearances, showing up for someone who is hurting, and holding onto a memory others chose to let go
- Assessment options for analytical writing on the choice to forget, a comparative essay with The Tempest, a research essay on whether memories can be erased, character monologues, and design presentations
- Text connections to novels, plays, and films that explore memory, grief, and survival, from The Giver to And Then There Were None
