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Copywork
About This Passage
This is chosen because the whole reason the camp exists is packed into two short ideas: bad boys, hot sun, dig a hole, good boy. Then Sachar quietly steps back and says 'That was what some people thought' — a small sentence that tells the reader he is not sure he believes it. Stanley finally arrives with a name, a family, and a choice that is not really a choice. In one short chapter, Sachar sets up the hero and the whole theory of the camp that will hurt him.
Most campers weren't given a choice. Camp Green Lake is a camp for bad boys. If you take a bad boy and make him dig a hole every day in the hot sun, it will turn him into a good boy. That was what som...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Retell Chapter 2 in three or four sentences. Introduce Camp Green Lake as a place for 'bad boys,' state the theory about digging holes in the sun, introduce Stanley Yelnats by name, and end with the choice the judge gave him.
Discussion Questions
- Sachar writes, 'That was what some people thought.' Why does he add this sentence right after the theory about turning bad boys into good boys by making them dig? Is the narrator on the side of the 'some people' or against them?
- The judge offered Stanley a 'choice' — jail or Camp Green Lake. Using what you know about the camp from Chapter 1, explain whether you think this is really a choice, or a trick dressed up as a choice.
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
Most likely true or expected — Sachar opens by saying, 'The reader is probably asking: Why would anyone go to Camp Green Lake?'
Item 2
The people who stay at a camp — in this book, the campers are boys sent there as punishment, not kids on vacation.
Item 3
The act of picking from two or more options — Stanley was given a choice between jail and Camp Green Lake.
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Critical Thinking
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