Atticus, Boo, and a Mad Dog: Rivet Your Attention Goes to Maycomb

English teachers, this one’s for you. Every year somebody reads To Kill a Mockingbird, and every year somebody mixes up Miss Maudie and Calpurnia, or can’t say why a dog in the street matters. So I built a board for it.

Rivet Your Attention puts every card face up. The pink cards are pictures: Atticus with his book, Boo Radley in the doorway, Scout in her overalls, Tom Robinson, the Ewells. The white cards don’t give you the name. They give you what the character means.

A lawyer who demonstrates moral courage while defending an innocent man. Easy. A kind, independent neighbor who teaches the children about courage and goodness. Now you have to think. And then the symbols show up, and that’s where the real test is.

Not just who. What it stands for.

The mockingbird. The knothole in the tree. The mad dog. The broken scales of justice. The crowd at the jailhouse door. Kids who can name every character still stall on these, and a miss adds five seconds. Nothing makes a student remember that the mad dog stands for racism quite like losing to the class next door over it.

Fifteen pairs, one clock, and a leaderboard. Put in your class or school name, hit Start, and race first period against sixth.

Use it with any novel

Click Edit Board and add your own pictures with Add Pictures, then type what each one matches: a character, a quote, a symbol, a setting. The Great Gatsby, Of Mice and Men, Lord of the Flies, Romeo and Juliet. Save board file keeps it for next year or for the English teacher across the hall.

It’s already on the site. The link below opens the clue board straight away. For a quicker round that matches pictures to names, pick To Kill a Mockingbird from the board menu instead.