The Secret Garden: Annotated with Reading Strategies, Page 2

  Key Ideas and Details:

  CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.1: Quote accurately from a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.

  CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.2: Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text, including how characters in a story or drama respond to challenges or how the speaker in a poem reflects upon a topic; summarize the text.

  CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.3: Compare and contrast two or more characters, settings, or events in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., how characters interact).

  Craft and Structure:

  CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.4: Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative language such as metaphors and similes.

  CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.5: Explain how a series of chapters, scenes, or stanzas fits together to provide the overall structure of a particular story, drama, or poem.

  CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.6: Describe how a narrator's or speaker's point of view influences how events are described.

  Integration of Knowledge and Ideas:

  CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.7: Analyze how visual and multimedia elements contribute to the meaning, tone, or beauty of a text (e.g., graphic novel, multimedia presentation of fiction, folktale, myth, poem).

  CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.9: Compare and contrast stories in the same genre (e.g., mysteries and adventure stories) on their approaches to similar themes and topics.

  Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity:

  CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.10: By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poetry, at the high end of the grades 4-5 text complexity band independently and proficiently.

  The following Common Core State Standards demonstrate the integration of technology applied to English language arts, emphasizing how technology can be used as a way to learn knowledge and skills related to reading.

  Comprehension and Collaboration:

  CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.SL.2: Integrate and evaluate information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively, and orally.

  Presentation of Knowledge and Ideas:

  CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.SL.5: Make strategic use of digital media and visual displays of data to express information and enhance understanding of presentations.

  Vocabulary Acquisition and Use:

  CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.L.4: Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases by using context clues, analyzing meaningful word parts, and consulting general and specialized reference materials, as appropriate.

  © Copyright 2010. National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. All rights reserved.”

  The Two Chapter Ones

  To help you get started using this enhanced version of The Secret Garden you will find that there are two versions of the first chapter from the book. The first is a chapter with strategy questions and approaches, such as vocabulary words in bold, along with pre- and post- strategies. In the second version, an example reader, gives their thoughts and ideas from when they read the chapter, answering questions, making predictions and figuring out what the vocabulary means has been included. This was done so that you could see a sample of what you should be doing as you read. You should try the first (unanswered) chapter first so you can see how you might be doing. If you don’t want to use the answered chapter to check yourself, then just skip it when you get there and go to the actual Chapter 2.

  Book Pre-reading: Vocabulary

  Even before we begin reading there are some pre-reading strategies we can use to start thinking about what we are going to read. Below here is a list of some vocabulary words, some of which you might already know and others would be new. Read the list as see if you can identify any words you know and recall anything about those words that you remember. This should stimulate your “prior knowledge” (anything that you might already know) about the topic and prepares you for what you are about to read in the book. There is nothing you have to write or do yet, just think and remember.

  1.cholera

  2.tyrannical

  3.governess

  4.disdaining

  5.appalling

  6.desolation

  7.impudent

  8.sallow

  9.singular

  10.hearth

  11.tapestry

  12.imperious

  13.rustic

  14.languid

  15.buffeting

  16.tantrum

  17.homely

  18.heathen

  19.tremulous

  20.naught

  21.reproach

  22.herbaceous

  23.doleful

  24.obstinate

  25.affectation

  26.unscrupulous

  27.recluse

  28.menagerie

  29.morbid

  30.gnarled

  31.testily

  32.mystic

  33.boudoir

  34.incantation

  35.hypochondriac

  Book Pre-Reading: The KWL Chart

  Let’s start our strategies about the Secret Garden by making a KWL chart (Know, Want to know, Learned). This kind of chart is a graphic organizer that you can use as you start reading a book, article, chapter, or topic. The KWL is a simple, three-column chart to help you identify what you already know about what you are going to read (also known as prior knowledge), and to identify questions that you want to find as you read. Then with those questions in mind while reading, you can add what you learned along the way. The basic directions for constructing your KWL chart are simple. First write in the Know (K) box anything that you already know about what you are going to read, make it a good list of things, even things that might be associated, but not in the story. Next, ask yourself what you think that you Want to Know (W) about the topic or story you are about to read. Also remember that as you read, you can come back to the Want to know and add more questions. Now it is time to start reading the book. As you find answers to your questions, add them to the Learned box (L) next to the question that was asked and now answered. As you read and finish a chapter, look back at your KWL and see if you have more answers or questions to add.

  The Secret Garden by Mary Hodgson Burnett

  Know (K)

  Want to know (W)

  Learned (L)

  K:

  W:

  L:

  K:

  W:

  L:

  K:

  W:

  L:

  K:

  W:

  L:

  K:

  W:

  L:

  K:

  W:

  L:

  Don’t be limited by the number of boxes here, your KWL can be as long as you like.

  THE SECRET GARDEN

  BY FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT

  Cover prediction - what do you think that the story is about based on what you can see in the book’s cover picture?

  CHAPTER 1: THERE IS NO ONE LEFT

  Chapter Prediction:

  Going by the title of the chapter, what do you think is going to happen?

  Characters:

  As you read this chapter, use your highlighting tool to identify all the characters, for example Mary Lennox in the first line.

  Vocabulary:

  Vocabulary or unusual words are already in bold. When you come to one, try to figure out what it means by looking at the sentence, and then use your ebook’s built in dictionary to see the dictionary definition.

  Analysis:

  Here is the first sentence of the book. Read it once and think about what it is saying.

  ”When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen.”

  When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most
disagreeable-looking child ever seen. It was true, too. She had a little thin face and a little thin body, thin light hair and a sour expression. Her hair was yellow, and her face was yellow because she had been born in India and had always been ill in one way or another. Her father had held a position under the English Government and had always been busy and ill himself, and her mother had been a great beauty who cared only to go to parties and amuse herself with gay people. She had not wanted a little girl at all, and when Mary was born she handed her over to the care of an Ayah who was made to understand that if she wished to please the Mem Sahib she must keep the child out of sight as much as possible. So when she was a sickly, fretful, ugly little baby she was kept out of the way, and when she became a sickly, fretful, toddling thing she was kept out of the way also. She never remembered seeing familiarly anything but the dark faces of her Ayah and the other native servants, and as they always obeyed her and gave her her own way in everything, because the Mem Sahib would be angry if she was disturbed by her crying, by the time she was six years old she was as tyrannical and selfish a little pig as ever lived. The young English governess who came to teach her to read and write disliked her so much that she gave up her place in three months, and when other governesses came to try to fill it they always went away in a shorter time than the first one. So if Mary had not chosen to really want to know how to read books she would never have learned her letters at all.

  One frightfully hot morning, when she was about nine years old, she awakened feeling very cross, and she became crosser still when she saw that the servant who stood by her bedside was not her Ayah.

  "Why did you come?" she said to the strange woman. "I will not let you stay. Send my Ayah to me."

  The woman looked frightened, but she only stammered that the Ayah could not come and when Mary threw herself into a passion and beat and kicked her, she looked only more frightened and repeated that it was not possible for the Ayah to come to Missie Sahib.

  There was something mysterious in the air that morning. Nothing was done in its regular order and several of the native servants seemed missing, while those whom Mary saw slunk or hurried about with ashy and scared faces. But no one would tell her anything and her Ayah did not come. She was actually left alone as the morning went on, and at last she wandered out into the garden and began to play by herself under a tree near the veranda. She pretended that she was making a flower-bed, and she stuck big scarlet hibiscus blossoms into little heaps of earth, all the time growing more and more angry and muttering to herself the things she would say and the names she would call Saidie when she returned.

  "Pig! Pig! Daughter of Pigs!" she said, because to call a native a pig is the worst insult of all.

  She was grinding her teeth and saying this over and over again when she heard her mother come out on the veranda with someone. She was with a fair young man and they stood talking together in low strange voices. Mary knew the fair young man who looked like a boy. She had heard that he was a very young officer who had just come from England. The child stared at him, but she stared most at her mother. She always did this when she had a chance to see her, because the Mem Sahib--Mary used to call her that oftener than anything else--was such a tall, slim, pretty person and wore such lovely clothes. Her hair was like curly silk and she had a delicate little nose which seemed to be disdaining things, and she had large laughing eyes. All her clothes were thin and floating, and Mary said they were "full of lace." They looked fuller of lace than ever this morning, but her eyes were not laughing at all. They were large and scared and lifted imploringly to the fair boy officer's face.

  "Is it so very bad? Oh, is it?" Mary heard her say.

  "Awfully," the young man answered in a trembling voice. "Awfully, Mrs. Lennox. You ought to have gone to the hills two weeks ago."

  The Mem Sahib wrung her hands.

  "Oh, I know I ought!" she cried. "I only stayed to go to that silly dinner party. What a fool I was!"

  At that very moment such a loud sound of wailing broke out from the servants' quarters that she clutched the young man's arm, and Mary stood shivering from head to foot. The wailing grew wilder and wilder. "What is it? What is it?" Mrs. Lennox gasped.

  "Someone has died," answered the boy officer. "You did not say it had broken out among your servants."

  "I did not know!" the Mem Sahib cried. "Come with me! Come with me!" and she turned and ran into the house.

  After that, appalling things happened, and the mysteriousness of the morning was explained to Mary. The cholera had broken out in its most fatal form and people were dying like flies. The Ayah had been taken ill in the night, and it was because she had just died that the servants had wailed in the huts. Before the next day three other servants were dead and others had run away in terror. There was panic on every side, and dying people in all the bungalows.

  During the confusion and bewilderment of the second day Mary hid herself in the nursery and was forgotten by everyone. Nobody thought of her, nobody wanted her, and strange things happened of which she knew nothing. Mary alternately cried and slept through the hours. She only knew that people were ill and that she heard mysterious and frightening sounds. Once she crept into the dining-room and found it empty, though a partly finished meal was on the table and chairs and plates looked as if they had been hastily pushed back when the diners rose suddenly for some reason. The child ate some fruit and biscuits, and being thirsty she drank a glass of wine which stood nearly filled. It was sweet, and she did not know how strong it was. Very soon it made her intensely drowsy, and she went back to her nursery and shut herself in again, frightened by cries she heard in the huts and by the hurrying sound of feet. The wine made her so sleepy that she could scarcely keep her eyes open and she lay down on her bed and knew nothing more for a long time.

  Many things happened during the hours in which she slept so heavily, but she was not disturbed by the wails and the sound of things being carried in and out of the bungalow.

  When she awakened she lay and stared at the wall. The house was perfectly still. She had never known it to be so silent before. She heard neither voices nor footsteps, and wondered if everybody had got well of the cholera and all the trouble was over. She wondered also who would take care of her now her Ayah was dead. There would be a new Ayah, and perhaps she would know some new stories. Mary had been rather tired of the old ones. She did not cry because her nurse had died. She was not an affectionate child and had never cared much for anyone. The noise and hurrying about and wailing over the cholera had frightened her, and she had been angry because no one seemed to remember that she was alive. Everyone was too panic-stricken to think of a little girl no one was fond of. When people had the cholera it seemed that they remembered nothing but themselves. But if everyone had got well again, surely someone would remember and come to look for her.

  But no one came, and as she lay waiting the house seemed to grow more and more silent. She heard something rustling on the matting and when she looked down she saw a little snake gliding along and watching her with eyes like jewels. She was not frightened, because he was a harmless little thing who would not hurt her and he seemed in a hurry to get out of the room. He slipped under the door as she watched him.

  "How queer and quiet it is," she said. "It sounds as if there were no one in the bungalow but me and the snake."

  Almost the next minute she heard footsteps in the compound, and then on the veranda. They were men's footsteps, and the men entered the bungalow and talked in low voices. No one went to meet or speak to them and they seemed to open doors and look into rooms. "What desolation!" she heard one voice say. "That pretty, pretty woman! I suppose the child, too. I heard there was a child, though no one ever saw her."

  Mary was standing in the middle of the nursery when they opened the door a few minutes later. She looked an ugly, cross little thing and was frowning because she was beginning to be hungry and feel disgraceful
ly neglected. The first man who came in was a large officer she had once seen talking to her father. He looked tired and troubled, but when he saw her he was so startled that he almost jumped back.

  "Barney!" he cried out. "There is a child here! A child alone! In a place like this! Mercy on us, who is she!"

  "I am Mary Lennox," the little girl said, drawing herself up stiffly. She thought the man was very rude to call her father's bungalow "A place like this!" "I fell asleep when everyone had the cholera and I have only just wakened up. Why does nobody come?"

  "It is the child no one ever saw!" exclaimed the man, turning to his companions. "She has actually been forgotten!"

  "Why was I forgotten?" Mary said, stamping her foot. "Why does nobody come?"

  The young man whose name was Barney looked at her very sadly. Mary even thought she saw him wink his eyes as if to wink tears away.

  "Poor little kid!" he said. "There is nobody left to come."

  It was in that strange and sudden way that Mary found out that she had neither father nor mother left; that they had died and been carried away in the night, and that the few native servants who had not died also had left the house as quickly as they could get out of it, none of them even remembering that there was a Missie Sahib. That was why the place was so quiet. It was true that there was no one in the bungalow but herself and the little rustling snake.

  Character Map:

  Write down your observations of the story character. Try to find evidence in the text.

  Description:

  Feelings: