Home › Reading schedules › Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Reading schedule · Grades 9–12

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 5 Weeks: A Reading Schedule

A five-week plan for reading Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, one section a week. Each week gives the reading, a short summary of what happens, three discussion questions and the escape room that goes with it. For grades 9–12, in class or at home.

Pacing

Rhetoric-stage students (grades 9–12) can read a section a week independently, with time to annotate and to write. The questions suit seminar discussion or short written responses, and the escape room makes a quick check on the reading before the conversation or the essay. Some sections are much longer than others, so look ahead and give the heaviest weeks extra time.

Each week ends with an escape room on that week's reading: seven self-checking locks that run in any browser, with no logins, and progress is saved, so a room can be finished another day. Every room has free taster locks to try, and members can open them all.

Print this schedule Escape rooms on Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Week 1: Chapters 1–10

Read: Chapters 1–10

Huck lives with the Widow Douglas and joins Tom Sawyer's gang until his father, Pap, returns and shuts him in a cabin across the river. Huck fakes his own murder and escapes to Jackson's Island, where he meets Jim, who has run away from Miss Watson; they find a floating house, and Jim is bitten by a rattlesnake.

Discussion questions

1. Why does Huck dislike being civilised by the widow?
2. Why does Huck fake his death rather than simply run away?
3. Why has Jim run away?

Escape room: Escape to the Island (lockedlessons.com/rooms/huck-finn-chapters-1-10/)

Week 2: Chapters 11–18

Read: Chapters 11–18

Disguised as a girl, Huck learns from Mrs Loftus that men are hunting Jim, and they flee down the river on a raft. They board a wrecked steamboat, argue about King Solomon, are separated in the fog, miss Cairo and are run down by a steamboat; Huck is taken in by the Grangerfords, who are locked in a feud.

Discussion questions

1. Why does Huck feel bad about tricking Jim after the fog?
2. What does missing Cairo mean for Jim?
3. What does Twain show through the Grangerford feud?

Escape room: Fog on the River (lockedlessons.com/rooms/huck-finn-chapters-11-18/)

Week 3: Chapters 19–26

Read: Chapters 19–26

Two swindlers who call themselves a duke and a king come aboard the raft. They fleece a camp meeting and put on a Shakespeare show, Huck sees the shooting of Boggs and Colonel Sherburn's speech to the mob, and the swindlers pretend to be the brothers of the dead Peter Wilks.

Discussion questions

1. Why does Huck go along with the duke and the king?
2. What does Sherburn say about the crowd, and is he right?
3. How do the swindlers fool the townspeople?

Escape room: Kings and Dukes (lockedlessons.com/rooms/huck-finn-chapters-19-26/)

Week 4: Chapters 27–33

Read: Chapters 27–33

Huck hides the Wilks gold in the coffin and tells Mary Jane the truth. The real Wilks brothers arrive, the tests end in the graveyard, the king sells Jim, and Huck writes a letter about Jim and then decides what to do with it; at the Phelps farm he is taken for someone else, and Tom Sawyer arrives.

Discussion questions

1. Why does Huck decide to help Mary Jane?
2. What does Huck's decision about the letter show about him?
3. Why is Tom's arrival both a help and a problem?

Escape room: The Torn Letter (lockedlessons.com/rooms/huck-finn-chapters-27-33/)

Week 5: Chapters 34–43

Read: Chapters 34–43

Tom insists on freeing Jim in the style of his adventure books, with case-knives, a rope ladder, inscriptions, creatures in the hut and warning letters. On the night of the escape Tom is shot, Jim stays to help and is captured, and the truth about Miss Watson comes out.

Discussion questions

1. Why does Tom make the escape so complicated?
2. What does Jim's choice after Tom is wounded show?
3. How do you feel about Tom's plan once you know the truth about Miss Watson?

Escape room: Evasion by the Book (lockedlessons.com/rooms/huck-finn-chapters-34-43/)