The Sign of the Beaver

Reading Check and Short Answer Questions on key plot points are designed for guided reading assignments, in-class review, formative assessment, quizzes, and more.

Chapters 1-5

Reading Check

1. Who does Matt fear while living alone in his cabin?

2. Who spends the night at Matt’s cabin and then steals from him?

3. What does Matt lose that his father entrusted to him?

4. What’s the one food Matt knows he can successfully obtain in the woods?

5. What food does Matt try to obtain that nearly gets him killed?

Short Answer

Answer each question with at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What method does Matt use to track the passing days?

2. Who (or what) ransacks Matt’s cabin, and how does it happen?

3. Whom does Matt meet in the woods while hunting for food, and how does he meet them?

Chapters 6-15

Reading Check

1. What’s the first book Matt reads to Attean?

2. Which animal sign marks the territory of Attean’s people?

3. Attean offers Matt a replacement for his lost rifle. What is it?

4. What’s the second book Matt reads to Attean?

5. Attean’s people have a myth about a great flood. Who is this myth’s hero?

6. What animal do Attean and Matt fight in the forest?

Short Answer

Answer each question with at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What does Saknis want Matt to teach Attean, and why?

2. Why does Matt choose Robinson Crusoe to read to Attean?

3. What is a skill that Attean teaches Matt?

Paired Resource

“Confidence”

• This article on self-confidence comes from the Nemours Foundation.
• This article includes thoughtful risk-taking, stretching to learn new things, and studying skill topics.
• Connects to the theme of Overcoming the Dangers of the Forest
• Attean teaches Matt many survival skills, and Matt loves the confidence he gets from knowing how to take care of himself while living in the woods. How do Attean’s lessons improve Matt’s state of mind? How do you feel when you learn a useful skill? How can new skills change one’s life?

“Nurtured by Nature”

• This article from the American Psychological Association discusses the ways that visits to natural settings, such as city parks and wilderness treks, improve well-being.
• Matt moves from the busy coastal town of Quincy, Massachusetts to the great forests of central Maine. It’s a stressful experience full of danger, but it also helps him grow as a person. How do the woods improve Matt’s sense of himself?

Chapters 16-20

Reading Check

1. When Matt first visits Attean’s village, which resident in particular hates him?

2. What product do European traders want from Saknis’s people?

3. What animal does Matt free from a leg trap?

4. Who helps Matt free the animal from the trap?

5. When Matt plays a betting game with the Penobscot boys and loses, what does he have to give up?

6. Attean goes into the forest for a week in search of what?

Short Answer

Answer each question with at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What happened to Attean’s parents?

2. When Matt leaves the Penobscot village after visiting for a day, he has a black eye. Why?

3. What does Matt fear will happen should Attean fulfill his quest?

Paired Resource

“Economic Activities: Fur Trade”

• This site sponsored by the Canadian Museum of History dives into the economic and cultural impact of fur trading on both the French colonists in northeast Maine and the Indigenous people who worked with them.
• Saknis and Attean’s people, the Penobscot, were heavily involved in fur trapping, and they sided with the French during the French and Indian War—yet fur trading proved a destabilizing factor in their lives.
• How is the fur trade both good and bad for Saknis’s village?

“Origin and History of Lacrosse”

• World Lacrosse offers a brief explanation of the game and its history
• Matt plays the ball-and-sticks game that later becomes the international sport of lacrosse. Does the modern version seem as rough as the Beaver clan game?

Chapters 21-25

Reading Check

1. Before Saknis’s village leaves, Attean brings Matt what three gifts?

2. What does Matt give Attean when they part?

3. To stay warm, what does Matt make from rabbit pelts?

4. What piece of furniture does Matt make to help his mother?

Short Answer

Answer each question with at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Before they leave for the winter, what do Saknis and Attean ask of Matt?

2. Matt’s family arrives months late. What caused the delay?

3. What shocks Matt’s family about his life at the cabin?

Recommended Next Reads

Bearstone by Will Hobbs (1989)

• An Ute and Navajo teen struggles to recover his culture and identity while living and working with a white rancher who mentors him. During his spiritual quest in the high mountains of southern Colorado, he tries to protect his totem animal, the grizzly bear, from hunters.
• This novel offers parallels to The Sign of the Beaver in the topics of resentment between European colonists and Indigenous groups and challenges of surviving in the wilderness.
• Bearstone on SuperSummary

The Indian in the Cupboard by Lynne Reid Banks (1980)

• A cupboard magically changes a boy’s action figure into a real Iroquoian man, and the boy learns to overcome his biases about Indigenous people.
• The work won several awards, has four sequels, and was adapted into a feature film.
• Though the book is controversial for its stereotypes, it upholds the idea that all people, regardless of their origins or size, deserve respect.
• The Indian in the Cupboard on SuperSummary