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Copywork
About This Passage
The barn swing gets the chapter's most famous paragraph, and the author makes a daring choice inside it: he stops describing the children and hands the rope to you. These three sentences carry the whole ride - the careful setup, the gathered nerve, and the drop that turns into flight. Notice how the long third sentence saves its rescue for the middle: you fall first, and only then does the rope 'begin to catch you.'
Then you straddled the knot, so that it acted as a seat. Then you got up all your nerve, took a deep breath, and jumped. For a second you seemed to be falling to the barn floor far below, but then sud...
Full copywork activity with handwriting lines available in the complete study guide.
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Retell the chapter as two stories braided together: above, the children's loud day - pie, frog, swing, raspberries, the spider hunt, and the explosion that ends it; below, Charlotte's quiet one - the long wait, the morning idea, the gullible lesson, and the midnight weaving. Mark the one moment the two stories touch - the stick over the fence - and what each story carries away from it.
Discussion Questions
- Charlotte's confidence comes from her trade: 'If I can fool a bug,' she thinks, 'I can surely fool a man. People are not as smart as bugs.' She has spent her life fooling quick, sharp-eyed flies. What does her work as a trapper give her that makes the plan feel possible? Use the words of her idea and the details of how she catches her living to explain why the plan feels possible to her.
- The chapter braids two very different days: above, the children's loud one - pie, frog, swing, raspberries; below, Charlotte's quiet one - waiting, thinking, and at last weaving. The two days touch only once, when Avery's stick comes over the fence. Why might the author weave the silly, noisy day together with the secret, serious one? Use the details of both days and the moment they collide to explain what each story does for the other.
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Vocabulary
Item 1
Easy to fool; quick to believe anything.
Item 2
Firmly decided; not going to give up.
Item 3
A sudden burst with noise and force.
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Critical Thinking
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