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. What challenges might someone face while working in a team? How can working in a team be beneficial for completing a task? How can it be detrimental? Explain.

Teaching Suggestion: This Short Answer question invites students to explore the themes Teamwork Brings Us Together and The Benefits of Quick Thinking. Dahl’s novel explores the ways that working together can be important for achieving goals. In particular, Muggle-Wump, his family, the Roly-Poly Bird, and the other birds team up to seek revenge against the Twits. Although Dahl’s novel focuses on the benefits of teamwork, students may benefit from exploring instances when working individually is best for a specific outcome.

• “Teamwork Skills: Being an Effective Group Member” from the University of Waterloo shares different ways that students may explore teamwork in the classroom.
• “Children’s Books About Teamwork and Cooperation” from Childrenslibrarylady.com includes a long list of children’s book titles about teamwork and discusses the importance of mastering cooperation as a skill.

Short Activity

The circus is one of the most famous and oldest forms of entertainment, but there are fewer circuses now than there were when The Twits was first published in 1980.