Preview
Copywork
About This Passage
This passage gives Trailblazers a sustained, moving image of farm labor in early summer. It rewards careful copying with its precise verbs (rattle, hoisted) and its unusual noun (swathes), and it shows how White stitches work and wonder together in one long, rolling sentence before dropping into the shorter sentence about children hiding in the loft.
All morning you could hear the rattle of the machine as it went round and round, while the tall grass fell down behind the cutter bar in long green swathes. Next day, if there was no thunder shower, a...
Full copywork activity with handwriting lines available in the complete study guide.
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Tell the story of Chapter 6 in order, from the opening picture of early summer through the hatching of the goslings and ending with Templeton rolling the dud egg away.
Discussion Questions
- When Templeton creeps out to ask about the missing egg, the text says he was not well liked and not trusted. What in Templeton's behavior and words in this scene shows you why the other animals feel this way about him?
- The narrator calls early summer a jubilee time for birds and catalogs the sparrow from Boston, the phoebe on the apple bough, and the song sparrow. What do these bird voices contribute to the mood of the chapter, and why might E.B. White open with such a long catalog before the hatching begins?
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
Pleased or satisfied because something turned out the way you hoped.
Item 2
Not able to be lived in, held, or defended any longer.
Item 3
Shocked and horrified by something you find wrong or disgusting.
+ 9 more vocabulary words in the complete study guide
Critical Thinking
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