Students investigate how rules, trust, and teamwork shape decision-making by connecting key moments from The Maze Runner to real situations in their school community. Through role-play, sketch notes, team discussions, and guidance from a counselor, restorative practices coordinator, or community mentor, they examine leadership, pressure, and responsible choices from multiple perspectives. Over two weeks, they create and revise a digital slide deck with sketches, photos, and captions, then share a final product and portfolio that show growth in collaboration, problem-solving, and understanding of the essential question.

Students will analyze how rules, trust, and teamwork shape characters’ choices in key scenes and compare those choices to real decisions in their school community. They will strengthen speaking and listening skills through role-play, small-group discussions with a counselor, restorative practices coordinator, or community mentor, and short presentations that explain changing ideas about leadership and responsibility. Students will create and revise a digital slide deck with sketches, photos, and captions that communicates clear evidence from the text and from school-based examples. They will also document growth in collaboration, problem-solving, and reflection through portfolio artifacts, gallery walk feedback, and reflection cards.

Students will build a digital slide deck that includes sketches, photos, and captions comparing key moments from the story to real school-community situations involving trust, rules, teamwork, and responsible choices. Along the way, they will create team signs, sketch notes, map notes, role-play scene plans, and draft slides that capture their thinking and revisions after quick teacher feedback. By the end, each small group will present a short scene, model, poster, or digital product and explain how their understanding of leadership, trust, and responsible decision-making changed over time. Each student will also contribute reflection cards and brief portfolio pieces such as writing samples and process photos for the final gallery walk.

Set up an “Exit the Maze Gallery” with images, props, and short acted moments from The Maze Runner that hint at rules, pressure, and survival, then have students move through the space and jot quick notices about trust and teamwork. After the gallery, place students in teams to create a team sign, sketch, or one-slide digital response showing what trust and teamwork look like in their own school community. Close with a brief share-out that surfaces the driving question about how rules, trust, and teamwork shape choices in challenging situations. This gives every student an immediate entry point into the text while connecting the story to real school decisions.

Host a short “School Maze Choices Showcase” where groups present their digital slide decks alongside their small-group scene, model, poster, or digital product, explaining how key moments from the novel connect to real school decisions about trust, rules, and teamwork. Set up the room as a gallery walk with sketches, map notes, photos, writing samples, and reflection cards from each portfolio so classmates, families, and invited school staff such as the counselor, restorative practices coordinator, or community mentor can leave feedback on collaboration, problem-solving, and responsible choices. End with a brief student reflection share-out in which each group names one revision they made after feedback and one way their thinking about leadership, trust, and responsible choices changed over the project.