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Copywork
About This Passage
Lee packs this sentence with sound and motion — the tin roof quells, the house roars and collapses, fire gushes, blankets flurry. Notice the verbs pile up the way the men pile onto the neighboring roofs. The sentence is an action photograph of a whole town saving what it can.
Miss Maudie’s tin roof quelled the flames. Roaring, the house collapsed; fire gushed everywhere, followed by a flurry of blankets from men on top of the adjacent houses, beating out sparks and burning...
Full copywork activity with handwriting lines available in the complete study guide.
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Retell the events of this chapter in order. How did the children react to the first snow? What did they build in the yard, and why did Atticus ask Jem to disguise it? What happened in the middle of the night, and what did the neighborhood do to help Miss Maudie?
Discussion Questions
- Miss Maudie says she "always wanted a smaller house." What does her response to the fire teach Jem and Scout about how to handle the loss of something you love?
- Atticus tells Jem that his snowman is "a near libel" of Mr. Avery. What does this scene show about how a father can correct a child without crushing the child's confidence?
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
put an end to something, especially a fire, a noise, or a disturbance
Item 2
making a deep, loud, continuous sound, like a great fire or a lion
Item 3
fell down suddenly because the structure could no longer hold itself up
+ 7 more vocabulary words in the complete study guide
Critical Thinking
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