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Copywork
About This Passage
This sentence is the instant of impact, and it carries four of this week's vocabulary words: WRENCHING, PINES, CLEARING, and BRACES. Notice how Paulsen uses technical aviation vocabulary ('main braces') alongside violent motion words ('wrenching') to make the crash feel both real and terrible.
There was a great wrenching as the wings caught the pines at the side of the clearing and broke back, ripping back just outside the main braces.
Full copywork activity with handwriting lines available in the complete study guide.
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Narrate Chapter 3 as if you were Brian, describing what you saw, felt, and decided from the moment the engine died to the moment you collapsed on the shore.
Discussion Questions
- What in the chapter shows you that Brian has begun to think like a pilot, even though he is still terrified? Point to at least two specific choices Brian makes at the controls.
- Paulsen slows time down when Brian sees the moose and the pond. How can you tell, from Paulsen's word choices, that he wants this moment to feel different from the panic before and the crash after it?
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
Tall evergreen trees with needles and cones.
Item 2
To move heavily and clumsily, almost losing control.
Item 3
An open space in a forest where the trees thin out.
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Critical Thinking
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