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Copywork
About This Passage
Harper Lee builds the sentence on one simple trick: she names 'summer' five times in four clauses and finishes with the smallest word of all — 'Dill.' Trailblazers should notice that the author saves the most important idea for last. Summer is the screened porch, the food, the thousand colors — but most of all, it is the person who comes to stay.
Summer was on the way; Jem and I awaited it with impatience. Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything ...
Full copywork activity with handwriting lines available in the complete study guide.
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Retell chapter four in four or five sentences. Begin with Scout's complaint about the Maycomb school system and end with the laugh Scout hears inside the Radley house.
Discussion Questions
- Scout says that as she 'inched sluggishly along the treadmill of the Maycomb County school system, I could not help receiving the impression that I was being cheated out of something.' What does Scout think she is being cheated out of, and why does she compare school to a 'treadmill' instead of a road?
- When Scout and Jem find the two Indian-head pennies in the velvet ring-box, Jem explains that Indian-heads 'come from the Indians. They're real strong magic, they make you have good luck.' Why does Jem believe the pennies are valuable, and what does his reasoning tell you about how Jem thinks about the world at this point in the book?
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
The warmest season of the year, the Finch children's favorite because it brings freedom from school and the return of Dill.
Item 2
One of the four parts of the year, each marked by its own weather and its own activities.
Item 3
Covered with fine wire mesh to keep insects out while letting cool air through.
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Critical Thinking
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