Taipei American School • English Literature
Metacognitive Reading Worksheets & Chapter Presentations
Predict • Question • Visualise • ConnectEach chapter below has two resources: a presentation to guide you through the chapter's key ideas and contexts, and a metacognitive worksheet with before, during, and after reading activities. Begin with the introduction materials — the sci-fi vocabulary and the history of the genre — before you open Chapter One.
Before You Read
Introduction
Science Fiction: Context & Vocabulary
Two resources to prepare you for the world of H.G. Wells. The vocabulary list builds the specialist language of science fiction — genre, speculation, dystopia, extrapolation. The introductory lesson maps the history and conventions of sci-fi, from Victorian scientific romance to the present day.
Select a chapter
Chapters 1–2
The Demonstration
The Time Traveller presents a startling theory: time is simply a fourth dimension. To prove it, he sends a small brass model spinning into the future — then invites his sceptical dinner guests to return next Thursday, when he will show them more.
Chapter 3
The Time Traveller Returns
A week later, the guests arrive to find their host absent. Then he appears — dishevelled, limping, hollow-eyed. He has been somewhere extraordinary. He asks for dinner first. Then he will tell them everything.
Chapter 4
Time Travelling
The machine hurtles 802,701 years into the future. The world blurs, civilisations rise and fall in seconds, and the Traveller lands in a strange garden world. His first encounter with its inhabitants raises more questions than it answers.
Chapter 5
In the Golden Age
The Traveller explores the world of the Eloi — beautiful, gentle, and utterly incurious. Their crumbling palaces suggest a civilisation in decline. Then he turns back to where he landed, and finds the Time Machine is gone.
Chapter 6
The Sunset of Mankind
The Traveller begins to piece together the truth: humanity has divided. The Eloi live above in passive comfort. But something else lives below — something that emerges only when the light fails. A theory forms, and it is deeply unsettling.
Chapter 7
A Sudden Shock
The Traveller's worst suspicion is confirmed: the Eloi are not the masters of this world — they are its livestock, kept and harvested by the Morlocks. Resolved to find weapons and fire, he carries Weena toward the distant Palace of Green Porcelain. They spend an uneasy night on an open hillside, waiting for dawn, while the dark forest watches from below.
Chapter 8
The Palace of Green Porcelain
The ruined museum — vast, silent, thick with centuries of dust — is both a refuge and an elegy for human knowledge. The Traveller moves through galleries of dead palaeontology, rotted books, and corroded machinery. His crucial finds: a metal lever wrenched from a machine, a box of perfectly preserved matches, and a lump of camphor. For the first time, he has a weapon against the dark.
Chapter 9
The Night of Fire
Heading back through a dense forest, the Traveller lights a fire to cover their retreat — and watches it rage beyond all control. In the smoke and confusion, Weena is lost. Surrounded by blinded, stumbling Morlocks in the burning forest, he fights until dawn, then limps away through the ashes. Weena is gone.
Chapters 10–11
Escape — and the End of the World
Grief-stricken, the Traveller returns to the White Sphinx and springs the Morlocks' trap — fitting his levers in total darkness, fighting off grasping hands — and hurtles into time. But he overshoots by millions of years. He finds a dying earth: a blood-red sun barely clearing the horizon, a lifeless beach crawling with monstrous crabs, and a final eclipse that swallows the last warmth from the sky. He barely escapes back.
Chapter 12 & Epilogue
Return — and Disappearance
The Traveller staggers back into his Victorian laboratory and rejoins his dinner guests. He tells his story; they receive it with varying degrees of scepticism. Two withered flowers are the only evidence. The next morning, the narrator finds him packing for another journey. The machine vanishes. He never returns. The narrator is left with the flowers, and a question the story cannot answer.