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. Where do pearls come from, and how are they used?

Teaching Suggestion: It may be helpful to share the following resources with students as they answer these questions. From there, you may want to explain and discuss why pearls are considered so valuable (such as scarcity, demand, their use as status symbols, etc.) as a prelude to future discussion of The Corrupting Influence of Greed. You could even invite students to describe their idea of a perfect or most valuable pearl to illustrate the subjectivity of perceived value, since students’ descriptions are likely to vary.

• A 3-minute video by National Geographic Wild demonstrating how pearls are formed
• "Pearl Diving in Mexico” describes the history and status of Mexico's pearl diving industry.

Short Activity

The narrator of The Pearl describes the story as a parable, or a simple narrative that illustrates a moral lesson. Suppose that a classmate asks you to help them cheat on an assignment. In a few simple sentences, write a parable demonstrating why cheating is a bad idea.