Overview

Lesson Procedure

55-65 minutes of class time across 5 phases.

1. Warm-Up5-10 minutes
2. Direct Instruction15 minutes
3. Guided Practice15 minutes
4. Independent Practice15-20 minutes
5. Closure5 minutes

1. Warm-Up5-10 minutes

   Project the three short notes from a bread-baking blog. Give pairs two minutes to answer the question under them.

   Warm-Up Prompt

   Note A: "Yeast is a tiny living thing. It feeds on sugar in the dough and gives off a gas, and the bubbles of gas make the dough puff up." Note B: "Stir the yeast into warm water, not hot water, and wait 10 minutes before you add the flour." Note C: "We made two bowls of the same dough. One sat in a warm kitchen and one in the refrigerator. After an hour, only the warm dough had doubled in size." Which note explains, which gives a procedure, and which discusses an experiment? Why would the writer include each one?

   Take answers. Note A is an explanation: it tells why dough rises, so a baker understands what is happening. Note B is a procedure: it gives steps, and "not hot water" is there to keep the reader from making a mistake (very hot water kills yeast). Note C discusses an experiment: two bowls that differ in one way, and a result that shows warmth matters. Tell students that RST.6-8.6 asks them to do this with science texts: analyze the author's purpose, the reason an author includes an explanation, a procedure or the account of an experiment, and what that part does for the reader.

2. Direct Instruction15 minutes

   Part 1: Words for talking about purpose. Keep this table up for the whole lesson.

   Words for analyzing an author's purpose in a science text

   Term	What it means	A question to ask
   Author's purpose	The reason an author includes a part of a text: what the author wants that part to do for the reader	Why is this here?
   Explanation	A part that tells how or why something happens	What is the author helping me understand?
   Procedure	A part that gives the steps for doing something, often with the reasons for the steps	Could I repeat this? Why this step?
   Experiment	A test that a scientist sets up on purpose to answer a question	What question is being tested?
   Precaution	A step taken to prevent harm or a mistake	What could go wrong without it?
   Result	What actually happened in a test	What did the author see or measure?
   Inference	A conclusion reasoned out from evidence	What does the author decide the result means?

   Part 2: Model with Passages 1 and 2. Jean-Henri Fabre (1823-1915) was a French teacher and scientist who spent his life watching insects. The Mason-bee of the Walls builds a hard nest of mud on a stone. Each cell holds one young bee, which spends the winter inside and in spring chews its way out through the mud. Before Fabre, the French scientist Reaumur reported a test by his friend Duhamel: a nest was put inside a glass funnel whose mouth was covered with a piece of gauze. The bees chewed through the hard mud but never cut the gauze, and they died under the glass. Reaumur concluded that insects know only how to do what they do in nature. Passage 1 is Fabre's reply. Passage 2 comes later in the chapter, where Fabre starts testing whether bees carried far away can find their nests. Words to know for Passage 1: gauze (thin, loose cloth), navvy (a laborer who digs), earthen dome (the mud cap of the nest), deliverance (escape), futile (useless), obstinacy (stubbornness), renewed (done again), stout (strong), partition (a thin wall), mandibles (an insect's jaws), membrane (a thin sheet). For Passage 2: Cerceris-wasps (wasps Fabre had tested the same way), maim (injure), forceps and pincers (tools like tweezers), screw of paper (a twist of paper), botanizing-case (a tin box for carrying plants), gum arabic (a natural glue), fleece (the bee's fuzzy hair), abdomen (the rear part of an insect's body), thorax (the middle part, where the wings attach). Diagram 1 shows the three kinds of passage. Passage 2 is a procedure to read and analyze, not to carry out: no one in this lesson catches, marks or handles bees.

   1The experiment does not satisfy me, for two reasons: first, to ask workers equipped with tools for cutting clay as hard as granite to cut a piece of gauze does not strike me as a happy inspiration; you cannot expect a navvy's pick-axe to do the same work as a dressmaker's scissors. Secondly, the transparent glass prison seems to me ill-chosen. As soon as the insect has made a passage through the thickness of its earthen dome, it finds itself in broad daylight; and to it daylight means the final deliverance, means liberty. It strikes against an invisible obstacle, the glass; and to it glass is nothing at all and yet an obstruction. On the far side, it sees free space, bathed in sunshine. It wears itself out in efforts to fly there, unable to understand the futile nature of its attempts against that strange barrier which it cannot see. It perishes, at last, of exhaustion, without, in its obstinacy, giving a glance at the gauze closing the conical chimney. The experiment must be renewed under better conditions.

   2The obstacle which I select is ordinary brown paper, stout enough to keep the insect in the dark and thin enough not to offer serious resistance to the prisoner's efforts. As there is a great difference, in so far as the actual nature of the barrier is concerned, between a paper partition and a clay ceiling, let us begin by enquiring if the Mason-bee of the Walls knows how or rather is able to make her way through one of these partitions. The mandibles are pickaxes suitable for breaking through hard mortar: are they also scissors capable of cutting a thin membrane? This is the point to look into first of all.

   1To come to facts: it is a matter of repeating with the Mason-bee of the Walls my former experiments with the Cerceris-wasps (Cf. "Insect Life": chapter 19.--Translator's Note.), of carrying the insect, in the dark, a long way from its nest, marking it and then leaving it to its own resources. In case any one should wish to try the experiment for himself, I make him a present of my manner of operation, which may save him time at the outset. The insect intended for a long journey must obviously be handled with certain precautions. There must be no forceps employed, no pincers, which might maim a wing, strain it and weaken the power of flight. While the Bee is in her cell, absorbed in her work, I place a small glass test-tube over it. The Mason, when she flies away, rushes into the tube, which enables me, without touching her, to transfer her at once into a screw of paper. This I quickly close. A tin box, an ordinary botanizing-case, serves to convey the prisoners, each in her separate paper bag.

   2The most delicate business, that of marking each captive before setting her free, is left to be done on the spot selected for the starting-point. I use finely-powdered chalk, steeped in a strong solution of gum arabic. The mixture, applied to some part of the insect with a straw, leaves a white patch, which soon dries and adheres to the fleece. When a particular Mason-bee has to be marked so as to distinguish her from another in short experiments, such as I shall describe presently, I confine myself to touching the tip of the abdomen with my straw while the insect is half in the cell, head downwards. The slight touch is not noticed by the Bee, who continues her work quite undisturbed; but the mark is not very deep and moreover it is in a rather bad place for any prolonged experiment, for the Bee is constantly brushing her belly to detach the pollen and is sure to rub it off sooner or later. I therefore make another one, dropping the sticky chalk right in the middle of the thorax, between the wings.

   • Purpose of discussing another scientist's experiment

     Passage 1, paragraph 1. Why does Fabre discuss Duhamel's experiment instead of simply describing his own?

     Result: To show that the old result does not prove what Reaumur thought, and so to justify a new test. Fabre names "two reasons": jaws made for mud are the wrong tool for cloth ("you cannot expect a navvy's pick-axe to do the same work as a dressmaker's scissors"), and the clear glass tricks the bee, which sees daylight and "wears itself out in efforts to fly there." His last sentence states the purpose: "The experiment must be renewed under better conditions."

   • Purpose of explaining a choice of materials

     Passage 1, paragraph 2. Why does Fabre explain why he chose brown paper, and what does he want to find out first?

     Result: Each property of the paper answers one of Duhamel's flaws: it is "stout enough to keep the insect in the dark" (no daylight to fool the bee) and "thin enough not to offer serious resistance." Explaining the choice shows the reader the new test is fair. He then names the first question: are the mandibles "also scissors capable of cutting a thin membrane? This is the point to look into first of all."

   • Purpose of describing a procedure in detail

     Passage 2. Why does Fabre give so many small steps for catching, carrying and marking a bee?

     Result: He states one purpose: "In case any one should wish to try the experiment for himself, I make him a present of my manner of operation, which may save him time at the outset." The details let others repeat the test. Many steps also carry a reason, which is a second purpose: to keep the bee able to fly home, so a failure to return is not caused by the handling. "There must be no forceps employed, no pincers, which might maim a wing." A mark on the abdomen gets rubbed off, so he marks the thorax instead.

3. Guided Practice15 minutes

   Pairs read Passage 3, which follows Passage 1 in the chapter. Words to know: perfect state (adult form), cocoons (silk cases the young bees rest in), node (the solid joint of a reed stem), stopper (a plug), sorghum (a tall grass with soft pith inside its stem), bell-glass (a glass cover shaped like a bell), perforated (pierced with a hole), orifice (an opening), impediment (an obstacle), incapacity (not being able). Pairs mark each sentence P (procedure) or E (experiment result), then decide why Fabre ran this test before any other.

   1In February, by which time the insect is in its perfect state, I take a certain number of cocoons, without damaging them, from their cells and insert them each in a separate stump of reed, closed at one end by the natural wall of the node and open at the other. These pieces of reed represent the cells of the nest. The cocoons are introduced with the insect's head turned towards the opening. Lastly, my artificial cells are closed in different ways. Some receive a stopper of kneaded clay, which, when dry, will correspond in thickness and consistency with the mortar ceiling of the natural nest. Others are plugged with a cylinder of sorghum, at least a centimetre (.39 inch--Translator's Note.) thick; and the remainder with a disk of brown paper solidly fastened by the edge. All these bits of reed are placed side by side in a box, standing upright, with the roof of my making at the top. The insects, therefore, are in the exact position which they occupied in the nest. To open a passage, they must do what they would have done without my interference, they must break through the wall situated above their heads. I shelter the whole under a wide bell-glass and wait for the month of May, the period of the deliverance.

   2The results far exceed my anticipations. The clay stopper, the work of my fingers, is perforated with a round hole, differing in no wise from that which the Mason-bee contrives through her native mortar dome. The vegetable barrier, new to my prisoners, namely, the sorghum cylinder, also opens with a neat orifice, which might have been the work of a punch. Lastly, the brown-paper cover allows the Bee to make her exit not by bursting through, by making a violent rent, but once more by a clearly defined round hole. My Bees therefore are capable of a task for which they were not born; to come out of their reed cells they do what probably none of their race did before them; they perforate the wall of sorghum-pith, they make a hole in the paper barrier, just as they would have pierced their natural clay ceiling. When the moment comes to free themselves, the nature of the impediment does not stop them, provided that it be not beyond their strength; and henceforth the argument of incapacity cannot be raised when a mere paper barrier is in question.

   • Why an experiment comes first

     Pairs explain the purpose of the reed-cell experiment in Passage 3 and why Fabre ran it before his main test.

     Result: The reed cells test one thing only: can the bee cut a barrier that is not mud? Paragraph 1 is the procedure: the cocoons go into reeds "with the insect's head turned towards the opening," closed with clay, sorghum or paper, so the bees are "in the exact position which they occupied in the nest." Paragraph 2 gives the results: a round hole in the clay, in the sorghum and in the paper. The purpose is to rule out one explanation before the main test: "henceforth the argument of incapacity cannot be raised when a mere paper barrier is in question." If bees later fail to cut paper, weak jaws cannot be the reason.

   Debrief: Why does Fabre put the reeds "standing upright, with the roof of my making at the top"? (So the only new thing is the material of the lid; everything else is as in the real nest.) Then start Activities 1-3.

4. Independent Practice15-20 minutes

   Students read Passages 4, 5 and 6 on their own and answer quiz questions 1-20. Passage 4 follows Passage 3 in the chapter, and Passage 5 follows Passage 4. Passage 6 is a modern explanation written for this page. Words to know: intervening (in between), enclosures (walls around something), inferences (conclusions reasoned from evidence), suicidal inaction (doing nothing, which leads to death), well-endowed (well supplied), metamorphosis (the change from young insect to adult), proviso (condition), stimulus (an inner push to act), emergence (coming out), abode (home), destined (meant), instinct (a behavior an animal is born able to do).

   1In addition to the cells made out of bits of reed, I put under the bell-glass, at the same time, two nests which are intact and still resting on their pebbles. To one of them I have attached a sheet of brown paper pressed close against the mortar dome. In order to come out, the insect will have to pierce first the dome and then the paper, which follows without any intervening space. Over the other, I have placed a little brown paper cone, gummed to the pebble. There is here, therefore, as in the first case, a double wall--a clay partition and a paper partition--with this difference, that the two walls do not come immediately after each other, but are separated by an empty space of about a centimetre at the bottom, increasing as the cone rises.

   2The results of these two experiments are quite different. The Bees in the nest to which a sheet of paper was tightly stuck come out by piercing the two enclosures, of which the outer wall, the paper wrapper, is perforated with a very clean round hole, as we have already seen in the reed cells closed with a lid of the same material. We thus become aware, for the second time, that, when the Mason-bee is stopped by a paper barrier, the reason is not her incapacity to overcome the obstacle. On the other hand, the occupants of the nest covered with the cone, after making their way through the earthen dome, finding the sheet of paper at some distance, do not even try to perforate this obstacle, which they would have conquered so easily had it been fastened to the nest. They die under the cover without making any attempt to escape. Even so did Reaumur's Bees perish in the glass funnel, where their liberty depended only upon their cutting through a bit of gauze.

   1This fact strikes me as rich in inferences. What! Here are sturdy insects, to whom boring through granite is mere play, to whom a stopper of soft wood and a paper partition are walls quite easy to perforate despite the novelty of the material; and yet these vigorous housebreakers allow themselves to perish stupidly in the prison of a paper bag, which they could have torn open with one stroke of their mandibles! They are capable of tearing it, but they do not dream of doing so! There can be only one explanation of this suicidal inaction. The insect is well-endowed with tools and instinctive faculties for accomplishing the final act of its metamorphosis, namely, the act of emerging from the cocoon and from the cell. [...] Moreover--and this is an important proviso, except for which the outfit would be useless--it has, I will not say the will to use those tools, but a secret stimulus inviting it to employ them. When the hour for the emergence arrives, this stimulus is aroused and the insect sets to work to bore a passage. It little cares in this case whether the material to be pierced be the natural mortar, sorghum-pith, or paper: the lid that holds it imprisoned does not resist for long. Nor even does it care if the obstacle be increased in thickness and a paper wall be added outside the wall of clay: the two barriers, with no interval between them, form but one to the Bee, who passes through them because the act of getting out is still one act and one only. With the paper cone, whose wall is a little way off, the conditions are changed, though the total thickness of wall is really the same. Once outside its earthen abode, the insect has done all that it was destined to do in order to release itself; to move freely on the mortar dome represents to it the end of the release, the end of the act of boring. Around the nest a new barrier appears, the wall made by the paper bag; but, in order to pierce this, the insect would have to repeat the act which it has just accomplished, the act which it is not intended to perform more than once in its life; it would, in short, have to make into a double act that which by nature is a single one; and the insect cannot do this, for the sole reason that it has not the wish to. The Mason-bee perishes for lack of the smallest gleam of intelligence. [...]

   1Jean-Henri Fabre ran his mason bee experiments in the south of France in the 1870s. Scientists still read his reports, partly because he described his procedures so carefully that others could repeat them. This passage explains how scientists today understand two of his results.

   2The first result is the paper cone. A mason bee spends the winter as an adult inside its mud cell. In spring it chews its way up through the mud cap. No one teaches it how: this is an instinct, a behavior an animal is born able to do. Many instincts work like a chain of steps. Each step starts the next one, and a step that is finished is not usually repeated. Once Fabre's bees were out of their cells, the chewing-out step of the chain was over, so a second wall a centimeter away did not start it again. Scientists today explain this result in much the same way Fabre did, although they no longer use his phrase "a secret stimulus."

   3The second result is the trip home. Many bees learn the look of the land around their nest. On their first flights they circle in widening loops, facing back toward the nest, as if taking pictures of the place. Honeybees, and probably many other bees, can also use the position of the sun as a compass. A bee let go in a strange place may fly around until it sees landmarks it knows, and then head straight home. How Fabre's bees found their way back from two and a half miles away is still not fully explained. Fabre thought it was "certainly not memory." Scientists today think learned landmarks are part of the answer, but not all of it.

   4Some of Fabre's bees died or were hurt in his experiments. Scientists who study insects today try to use as few animals as they can and to harm none. Bees in a school garden are for watching, not for catching.

5. Closure5 minutes

   Exit ticket: "Choose one passage from today. Write one sentence: 'The author [explains / describes a procedure for / discusses an experiment on] ___ in order to ___.' Then quote the words that show the purpose." Sort the tickets into "purpose stated and supported," "retells the passage without a purpose" and "purpose not supported by the text."

   Teacher note on the science, the animals and the language. Fabre's observations are careful, and scientists today explain the paper-cone result much as he did: getting out of the cell is an instinct, and the bee does not repeat a finished step (Passage 6). How bees find their way home is still studied; landmarks learned on early flights and the sun's position are part of the answer, and Fabre's "certainly not memory" goes further than today's evidence. Today these bees are placed in the genus Megachile, with Chalicodoma kept as a subgroup: the Mason-bee of the Walls (Chalicodoma muraria) is now Megachile parietina, and C. sicula is Megachile sicula. Fabre's experiments killed and injured bees; say so plainly, and do not repeat them. Students should watch bees only from a distance and never catch or handle them, and any student allergic to stings should stay away from nests. The passages keep the words of the 1914 translation ("navvy," "vigour") and Fabre's strong opinions as published; the cut at the end of Passage 5 removes two sentences in which he argues against the idea that insects share "a germ of human reason."

   Homework passage. Passage 7 comes after Passage 2 in the chapter. Fabre has carried two bees, and then five, about two and a half miles (about 4 km) from their nests and let them go. Words to know: fully established (proved), faculty (an ability), vigour (strength), articulation (a joint), maimed (injured), aviators (fliers), sainfoin (a pink-flowered field plant), reckoning (count), requisite (needed), colony (group of nests), Chalicodoma sicula (a smaller kind of mason bee), C. muraria (the Mason-bee of the Walls), populous (crowded).

   1It is therefore fully established that the Mason-bee of the Walls, carried to a distance of two and a half miles and released at a place which she has certainly never seen before, is able to return to the nest. But why do first one out of two and then two out of five fail to join their fellows? What one can do cannot another do? Is there a difference in the faculty that guides them over unknown ground? Or is it not rather a difference in flying-power? I remember that my Bees did not all start off with the same vigour. Some were hardly out of my fingers before they darted furiously into the air, where I at once lost sight of them, whereas the others came dropping down a few yards away from me, after a short flight. The latter, it seems certain, must have suffered on the journey, perhaps from the heat concentrated in the furnace of my box. Or I may have hurt the articulation of the wings in marking them, an operation difficult to perform when you are guarding against stings. These are maimed, feeble creatures, who will linger in the sainfoin-fields close by, and not the powerful aviators required by the journey.

   2The experiment must be tried again, taking count only of the Bees who start off straight from between my fingers with a clean, vigorous flight. The waverers, the laggards who stop almost at once on some bush shall be left out of the reckoning. Moreover, I will do my best to estimate the time taken in returning to the nest. For an experiment of this kind, I need plenty of subjects, as the weak and the maimed, of whom there may be many, are to be disregarded. The Mason-bee of the Walls is unable to supply me with the requisite number: there are not enough of her; and I am anxious not to interfere too much with the little Aygues-side colony, for whom I have other experiments in view. Fortunately, I have at my own place, under the eaves of a shed, a magnificent nest of Chalicodoma sicula in full activity. I can draw to whatever extent I please on the populous city. The insect is small, less than half the size of C. muraria, but no matter: it will deserve all the more credit if it can traverse the two miles and a half in store for it and find its way back to the nest. I take forty Bees, isolating them, as usual, in screws of paper.

Differentiation Strategies

Assessment Guidance

1. Question 1 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   In paragraph 1 of Passage 4, why does Fabre describe exactly how each paper wall was attached to its nest?

   ATo give readers directions for making paper cones to protect the bee nests in their own gardens BTo prove that brown paper is a stronger building material than the mud that the bees use for nests CTo show the nests differ in just one way, the gap between the walls, so the gap explains any difference DTo show that the second nest had twice as much paper as the first nest, so its bees had a much harder escape

2. Question 2 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Paragraph 1 of Passage 4 says the two nests were put "under the bell-glass, at the same time" as the reed cells. Why does Fabre mention "at the same time"?

   ASo the season and the conditions were the same for every test, and the timing cannot explain a difference BBecause he owned only one bell-glass and had no other place in the house to store his bee nests CBecause the reed cells needed the two nests close beside them to keep the young bees inside warm all winter DSo the bees from the two nests could help the bees in the reed cells chew their way out in May

3. Question 3 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Why does Fabre end Passage 4 with "Even so did Reaumur's Bees perish in the glass funnel"?

   ATo show his result explains the old one: those bees also died by a thin wall set away from the nest BTo show that Reaumur's experiment was carried out correctly after all and did not need any improvement CTo prove that glass and paper are the same material as far as a mason bee can tell DTo thank Reaumur for first suggesting the idea of covering a nest with a paper cone

4. Question 4 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Which sentence in Passage 4 states the result that Fabre's explanation in Passage 5 has to account for?

   A"To one of them I have attached a sheet of brown paper pressed close against the mortar dome." B"The results of these two experiments are quite different." C"In addition to the cells made out of bits of reed, I put under the bell-glass, at the same time, two nests" D"They die under the cover without making any attempt to escape."

5. Question 5 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Passage 5 begins, "This fact strikes me as rich in inferences." What does this opening signal?

   AThat Fabre is about to describe the steps of a brand-new experiment on the bees BThat Fabre is turning from what happened to what the result means CThat Fabre doubts his results and is planning to throw them out and start again DThat Fabre will now list the materials he used to build the two paper walls

6. Question 6 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   What question is Fabre's explanation in Passage 5 meant to answer?

   AHow do mason bees manage to build their hard nests out of mud on top of small stones? BHow far can a mason bee fly in a single day when it is looking for food? CWhy is brown paper a better material than gauze for testing mason bees? DWhy do bees able to cut paper die under a paper cone without trying?

7. Question 7 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   According to Fabre in Passage 5, why do the bees get through a paper sheet pressed tight against the nest?

   AThe tight sheet of paper was much thinner than the paper that was used to make the cone BThe two walls with no space between them "form but one to the Bee," so getting out is still one act CThe bees could see daylight shining through the tight sheet and flew straight toward it DThe bees in that nest were older and stronger than the bees in the nest that was covered with the cone

8. Question 8 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Why does Fabre add "though the total thickness of wall is really the same"?

   ATo rule out thickness as the cause, leaving the gap as the only difference BTo show readers that he measured every wall carefully with a ruler before the test began CTo admit that his experiment was unfair to the bees that were trapped under the cone DTo argue that a thicker wall will always stop a mason bee from getting out of its nest

9. Question 9 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Fabre writes that the bee has, "I will not say the will to use those tools, but a secret stimulus inviting it to employ them." Why does he choose "stimulus" instead of "will"?

   ATo show that the bee decides for itself, by careful thought, when it is time to leave BTo name the tools, such as the jaws, that the bee uses to cut through the mortar CTo show the bee acts on something set off in it at emergence, not on a choice DTo explain how the bee is able to find its way home after it has been carried away

10. Question 10 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    The last sentence kept in Passage 5 says, "The Mason-bee perishes for lack of the smallest gleam of intelligence." What does this sentence show about Fabre's purpose?

    AHe is reporting a measurement that he made during the experiment BHe uses the result to argue a larger point: the bee acts by instinct, not by reasoning CHe is apologizing to his readers for all of the bees that died during his paper-cone test DHe is describing a procedure that other scientists should now follow

11. Question 11 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    What is the purpose of the first paragraph of Passage 6?

    ATo give the steps for a new experiment that students can try on the bees at school BTo argue that scientists should stop reading Fabre's old reports about his bees CTo describe Fabre's childhood and his first teaching job in the south of France DTo tell readers what the passage will do: explain two of Fabre's results

12. Question 12 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Why does Passage 6 define "instinct" and describe instincts as a chain of steps?

    ASo readers see why a bee that has chewed out of its cell does not start again BSo the reader will know how to train a mason bee to chew its way through a sheet of brown paper CTo prove that the bees in Fabre's experiment were sick or weak before the experiment began DTo explain how a bee uses the position of the sun as a compass to find its way back home

13. Question 13 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Why does Passage 6 say that how Fabre's bees found their way back "is still not fully explained"?

    ATo show that Fabre's bees never really came back to their nests at all BTo admit plainly that today's explanation of homing is incomplete CTo prove that bees are not able to use the sun's position as a compass DTo encourage readers to repeat Fabre's homing experiment with bees they catch in their own gardens

14. Question 14 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Why does Passage 6 end with a paragraph about the bees that were hurt in Fabre's experiments?

    ATo explain how the bees in the homing trials managed to find their way home BTo give the results of Fabre's reed-cell test with the clay, sorghum and paper lids CTo add a caution for today's readers, who should watch bees rather than catch them DTo prove that Fabre never really carried out any of the experiments he described

15. Question 15 of 20 · Short Answer

    What question was the two-nest experiment in Passage 4 designed to answer? Explain how the way Fabre set up the two nests helps answer it, and cite both paragraphs.

    Show model answer

16. Question 16 of 20 · Short Answer

    Summarize Fabre's explanation in Passage 5 in two or three sentences. Then explain what purpose the explanation serves after the results in Passage 4.

    Show model answer

17. Question 17 of 20 · Short Answer

    Passage 5 and Passage 6 both explain why the bees died under the paper cone. Compare the two authors' purposes, and quote one sentence from each that shows the purpose.

    Show model answer

18. Question 18 of 20 · Short Answer

    Passage 6 says young bees fly "in widening loops, facing back toward the nest, as if taking pictures of the place." What is the purpose of this comparison in an explanation written for students?

    Show model answer

19. Question 19 of 20 · Short Answer

    Passage 4 contains both a description of a setup and a report of results. Quote one sentence of each, and explain why an author discussing an experiment needs both.

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20. Question 20 of 20 · Short Answer

    Write one sentence each for Passages 4, 5 and 6, using the frame "The author [explains / describes a procedure for / discusses an experiment on] ___ in order to ___."

    Show model answer

These standards connect to RST.6-8.6: prerequisites to review first, parallel standards at the same level, and next steps that build on it.

Standard text: Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy. © Copyright 2010. National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. All rights reserved.