The Last Kids on Earth

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. How does friendship help people survive? Explain your reasoning.

Teaching Suggestion: This prompt provides students with the opportunity to examine the science behind friendship and its effects. Students might start with prior knowledge or predictions. Then, after reading the resources here and annotating or taking notes, the class might reflect on new ideas they discovered through discussion or journaling. Extending this question to predict how important friends might be in a monster apocalypse can connect this exploration to the novel more directly and highlight the theme of Genuine Friendship as a Form of Survival.

• “When Teens Need Their Friends More Than Their Parents” from Greater Good Magazine focuses on the importance of friendship in adolescence.
• “Why Friendship Makes Us Healthier” from the BBC includes links to different research in its exploration of the scientific benefits of friendship.

Differentiation Suggestion: Students who struggle with social anxiety may not be comfortable answering this prompt. You might ask instead, “What does survival mean to you? How do people help each other survive in the world today?”