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Copywork
About This Passage
Chosen for its courtroom build: the passage opens with a verdict — 'sensible and useful' — then calls its witnesses one by one. Three short sentences climb a staircase of stronger and stronger verbs (hated, detested, loathed), and the final witness is human: the Zuckermans with their complaints and screens. By the end, the whole farm has testified against the flies, and Charlotte's web work stands quietly defended. Copying it gives practice with short parallel sentences, verbs chosen for exact strength, and an argument built from witnesses instead of explanations.
Her campaign against insects seemed sensible and useful. Hardly anybody around the farm had a good word to say for a fly. Flies spent their time pestering others. The cows hated them. The horses detes...
Full copywork activity with handwriting lines available in the complete study guide.
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Retell the chapter in its three movements: the comfortable opening — Wilbur liking Charlotte better, the farm's case against flies, the good meals — then the old sheep's visit and the terrible telling, and finally Charlotte taking charge: the honest answer, the scolding, and the brisk promise. End by naming the question the chapter leaves hanging when it closes.
Discussion Questions
- The chapter opens with Wilbur's opinion improving: he 'liked Charlotte better and better each day,' and her 'campaign against insects seemed sensible and useful.' By the end, she is his promised rescuer. How does the chapter move Wilbur from liking Charlotte to needing her? Use the words of the opening and the details of the promise scene to explain what changes between them.
- Only yesterday Wilbur called Charlotte's web work cruel — and today the chapter lines up witnesses against flies: 'Hardly anybody around the farm had a good word to say for a fly,' the cows and horses and sheep all hating them, even the Zuckermans 'putting up screens.' Why might the chapter gather all those voices now? Use the words of the witness sentences to explain how the farm's voices change the way that old verdict reads.
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Vocabulary
Item 1
A planned, ongoing effort to win something or fight something.
Item 2
Showing good practical judgment; reasonable.
Item 3
Bothering someone again and again.
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Critical Thinking
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