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Copywork
About This Passage
This is the very first thing Mary sees inside the garden. Burnett describes it slowly: the high walls, the climbing roses, the wintry brown grass. Copying carefully lets a young reader walk into the garden alongside Mary and notice every gray and brown thing that is waiting to come alive.
The high walls which shut it in were covered with the leafless stems of climbing roses which were so thick that they were matted together. Mary Lennox knew they were roses because she had seen a great...
Full copywork activity with handwriting lines available in the complete study guide.
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Retell Chapter 9 in order. Start with Mary standing inside the garden and looking at the walls, roses, and brown grass; then Mary kneeling down and seeing the tiny green points; then Mary clearing the weeds so the green points could breathe; then Mary going in to dinner and talking to Martha about Dickon, bulbs, and a little spade; and end with Mary hearing the far-off crying again in the corridor.
Discussion Questions
- When Mary whispers, 'How still it is! How still!' and then says, 'I am the first person who has spoken in here for ten years,' what in the story shows that Mary feels the garden is a very special, quiet place?
- Mary kneels down and sees 'sharp little pale green points' pushing up through the black earth. How do you know that these tiny green points make Mary happy and give her hope?
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
flowers that grow on bushes with thorny stems, often sweet-smelling
Item 2
tall, upright sides of a building or garden that close off a space
Item 3
the green plants that cover fields and lawns
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Critical Thinking
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