THE DIRECTED READING THINKING ACTIVITY

The Bumblebee Flies Anyway by Robert Cormier

STEP 1: Predicting and Reading

Ask students to pull out a blank piece of paper. Tell them that you will be reading them some passages from a book that you will soon be reading as a class. Do not tell them the title of the book or any information about it. Tell them that you will be reading them some passages and then asking them to make predictions related to the passages. This is what their blank papers are for. Read each passage and ask the student to respond to the questions after each passage. Read the passage more than once if necessary.

PASSAGE 1:

The day that Barney Snow saw the Bumblebee for the first time (although he didn't know it was the Bumblebee of course) was also the day that Mazzo got the telephone installed in his room and Ronson received the merchandise for the Ice Age. (p. 3)

1. What is the Bumblebee?

2. What is the merchandise?

3. What does the Ice Age referred to?

PASSAGE 2:

Barney was happy that he wasn't involved with the Ice Age. The last merchandise had been bad enough, and he was still feeling the effects. It had made him dizzy: nauseous, his stomach spinning as fast as the whirling room, the walls slanting toward each other, shimmering and willowy, giving the room a strange surrealistic dimension. (p. 3)

4. When Barney describes getting dizzy and nauseous, what is he really doing?

5. What does the Ice Age refer to? (You can change your answer from number 3.)

PASSAGE 3:

And when the Handyman was happy, everybody was happy, although happy probably wasn't the right word. Finally, after eighteen hours, the dizziness abandoned him. The nausea also left. He lay weak and wan and listless on the bed, no strength at all in his body but filled with a sweet sense of having survived. Don't forget, the Handyman warned, there will be aftermaths. (p. 3-4)

6. Why wouldn't happy be the right word?

7. What had been going on for eighteen hours that Barney would describe himself as having survived?

8. What or who is the Handyman?

9. What are aftermaths?

PASSAGE 4:

He left Isolation, left behind the spectacle of Ronson on the table, looking like some kind of giant insect, with strange antennae sprouting from him. And giggling away like mad. (p. 5)

10. What is the Isolation described?

11. Who or what is Ronson?

12. What genre is this piece of writing? Science Fiction, Non- fiction, Realism, Mystery, Horror, Fantasy, Western, Romance, or Adventure?

STEP 2: Proving

Put your students into groups of threes or fours. Don't let the students pick. Try to make each group equal in academic ability. After forming the groups, collect their predictions and paper clip or staple each group's collected responses together. Ask the students to name their groups. Put a post-it indicating the name of each group on their individual pile of predictions. Next, give students the handout with all the above prediction questions. Tell students that the questions are concerning the first chapter of The Bumblebee Flies Anyway. Explain to the students that the groups will be competing against each other to see who can get the most correct answers to the questions. Their correct answers will be tabulated from two things:
1) their predictive responses and
2) their responses to the questions after reading chapter one. Scores will be tabulated as groups. The group with the most points wins a designated prize. In the case of a tie, the winner would be decided by which group provided the most complete and thorough answers in the second part. Next, hand out the books and allow each group to read the chapter together and start digging for answers to the questions.

STEP 3: Assessment

Most of the questions must be answered through inference. By having the students read and dig for answers together, you can see their ability to infer meaning from a text as well as their ability to communicate and come to a consensus.