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. How might a person be treated for Being Different? In what ways may someone’s difference be a strong or beneficial characteristic?

Teaching Suggestion: Consider having students brainstorm ideas before settling into a quickwrite. This helps students who are struggling to think of ideas and gives others the chance to begin fleshing out their own thoughts. It may help to share examples from society or history. Writing on the whiteboard or under a document camera while students are also actively writing may help model the process, as can the resources below.

• “Encouraging Middle School Students to Embrace Differences” from Edutopia provides helpful tips and strategies to help students with identity.
• “15 Ordinary People Who Changed History” from Reader’s Digest gives various stories about people who stood out and changed the course of history by being or acting differently.

2. What kinds of bullying do students observe in school or society? What factors cause bullying to be more Prevalent? How might administrators, teachers, and parents help prevent this?