GradeSaver Lesson Plans - To Kill A Mockingbird

Day 1 - Reading Assignment

Students read chapters 1-6 (summary and analysis)

Thought questions (students consider while they read):

1. 1. What does it mean that “You never really understand a person … until you climb into his skin and walk around in it” (ch. 3)?
2. Why does Atticus Finch say that Bob Ewell should be allowed to break the law by “hunting out of season” (ch. 3)?
3. What do you think about what Jem calls the “Dewey Decimal System” of education (ch. 2 and ch. 4)? How is it a valuable or a poor system?
4. What does Miss Maudie mean when she says, “That is three-fourths colored folks and one-fourth Stephanie Crawford” (ch. 5)? What are some other ideas that white characters express about black characters or about other white characters?
5. What does it take to be the kind of person who “is the same in his house as he is on the public streets” (ch. 5)?
6. What does it mean that “What Mr. Radley did might seem peculiar to us, but it did not seem peculiar to him”(ch. 5)? Is he peculiar or not?

Vocabulary (in order of appearance)

“Make sure you understand the following words, and look up the words you do not know.”

Chapter 1:

• assuaged
• maintain (as in “posit”)
• chattels
• trot-lines
• unsullied
• imprudent
• tyrannical
• transition

Chapter 2:

• condescended
• misfortunes
• crimson
• indigenous
• entailment
• smilax
• vexations
• sojourn

Chapter 3:

• dispensation
• haint
• iniquities
• phenomenal
• contemptuous
• diminutive
• misdemeanor
• concessions
• disapprobation

Chapter 4:

• auspicious
• scuppernongs
• evasion

Chapter 5:

• benign
• chameleon
• benevolence
• morbid
• incomprehensible
• inquisitive
• dryly

Chapter 6:

• malignant
• desolate

Additional homework

1. Learn something about John Dewey’s views of childhood education. Write up to one paragraph about these views.
2. Make sure you can locate Alabama on a map of the United States.