Crabbe

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. What stories, shows, or games have you encountered in which a person is trying to survive in the wilderness? What are some of the reasons they are in this situation? What kinds of outcomes do these stories, shows, or games have?

Teaching Suggestion: Students may enjoy answering this question aloud, or sharing their written answers, so that they can consider other wilderness survival stories. Sharing will also acquaint them with a wider variety of reasons a person might be attempting to survive in the wilderness as well as a wider variety of outcomes. Knowing that there can be many different setups and outcomes for a story like this will increase their curiosity about the specific story they are about to read and prepare them to consider the novel’s theme of The Relationship Between Humanity and Nature. If students struggle to come up with examples of survival stories, you might offer them ideas from the resources listed below.

• This page on Backpacker Magazine’s site collects a range of true wilderness survival stories.
• This article from The Wilderness Society describes 14 wilderness adventure films.

2. What does a person need to know in order to survive in the wilderness? List 5 skills that would be important in this situation. Then, assign each skill a rank (1-5) that shows which is the most important (1) and least important (5).

Teaching Suggestion: Even without much prior knowledge or preparation, students can make intelligent guesses about wilderness survival skills and their relative importance. They may enjoy debating their answers afterward—and perhaps even create a whole-class list as a result of their debate. The video and article linked below help students evaluate how close their guesses have come to the opinion of experts. This might serve as an interesting springboard into a discussion about how much the average person knows about survival situations and how easily a person can get into trouble in the wilderness.

• An article on wilderness survival skills from Alderleaf Wilderness College
•  An 8-minute video from The Infographics Show offers survival skills ideas with animations.

Short Activity

Imagine a character who is hiking alone in a heavily forested wilderness area. It is getting dark, and suddenly your character realizes that they are lost. What is your character thinking and feeling? What do they see, hear, and smell? Suddenly, there is a suspicious noise—what is it? Write a 3-paragraph narrative in which you set the scene, describe your character’s potentially frightening encounter, and resolve the situation…one way or another.

Teaching Suggestion: This creative writing activity is deliberately worded to allow for a broad range of responses—students may choose to write pieces that are funny or serious, sad or uplifting, realistic or bizarre. The goal is not to elicit any particular kind of story but rather to engage students’ creativity and sensory imagery, and to help them empathize with the situation in which Crabbe finds himself. The activity can be accomplished somewhat quickly or can be extended and made more challenging by asking students to incorporate one or both of the literary elements linked below.

• This SuperSummary explanation of allusion defines the term, explains how and why it is used, and offers examples.
• This SuperSummary explanation of foreshadowing defines the term, explains how and why it is used, and offers examples.

Personal Connection Prompt

This prompt can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before reading the novel.

In the book you are about to read, the protagonist struggles with other people’s expectations of him—especially his parents. Is there something that the people in your life—parents or guardians, teachers, friends, leaders of activities you are involved in, etc.—expect of you, but that you think is unrealistic or unfair? What is it, and why do you think it is not a fair or realistic thing to expect of you? If nothing comes to mind, why do you think you are free from unrealistic expectations from others? How do you guess your circumstances or personality might differ from the main characters in the book?

Teaching Suggestion: Students can respond regardless of whether or not they chafe under others’ expectations, as students do not need to answer both sections. (If students are responding in writing, you might draw their attention to this in advance.) It may be beneficial to let students know that sharing with classmates is not required.