Beartown

Use this activity to engage all types of learners, while requiring that they refer to and incorporate details from the text over the course of the activity.

ACTIVITY 1: “Beartown Topic News Report”

In this activity, students will select a topic that appears in or is related to Beartown, research that topic, and write a news-style article about that topic.

Beartown contains many topics with which some readers may be unfamiliar, ranging from hockey to Sweden to sexual assault. Pick a topic of interest that appears in the novel and write a news-style article about that topic for a student about to read the novel.

• Pick a topic that interests you.
• Research that topic using library or internet resources.
• Draft, revise, and edit a brief article discussing that topic.
• Compile your article with those of your fellow students in a display of topics on the novel.

Share your topics with your classmates to learn about other topics that appear in Beartown. Does the added information help you to understand or think differently about the plot or conflicts of Beartown?

Teaching Suggestion: It may help to host a brainstorming session to generate research topic ideas. This is also a good opportunity to talk with students about reliable sources for information.

Differentiation Suggestion: For English learners, it will be helpful to provide news articles and/or resources in their first language. These students should be encouraged to either write in their first language or offered the opportunity to practice their speaking skills by presenting the information they find to a small group or the class, depending on student comfort level.

ACTIVITY 2: “Point of View Shift”

In this activity, students will use creative writing skills to write a scene from the book using a first-person or third-person limited point of view.

Beartown is a novel told through a third-person omniscient perspective, with occasional moments during which the narrator addresses the reader directly. Backman uses an all-knowing narrator to let the reader know a lot of information in a short period of time, which empowers the reader to form opinions about the characters; however, this can also make it harder to empathize with individual characters because there is an intentional emotional distance created by third-person narration.

To address this topic, pick a character (such as Maya, Amat, etc.) and a scene to become an expert on and provide a personalized version of the events presented in the text.

• Select a scene from the novel and write it from a different perspective.
• Please carefully consider of your choice of scene.
• How does the tone or mood of the scene you chose change with the variation in perspective? What new character insights can be gleaned from these changes?

Share your scene in a small group setting. You may summarize the content, read an excerpt, or both.

Teaching Suggestion: It may be prudent to provide a list of scenes for students to select. Students can choose from this list or be assigned one at random to prevent some scenes from being over-written. Before engaging in a sharing opportunity, students should submit the content of the stories for review due to the sensitivity concerns present in the novel.