To Kill a Mockingbird Questions
Chapters 1-4 Vocabulary and Chapter 1-4 Questions and Character Activity
Vocabulary Chapters 1-4: provide the part of speech and the definition for each word.
1. Assuage
2. Beadle
3. Foray
4. Human chattels
5. Malevolent
6. Strictures
7. Predilection
8. Entailment
9. Contentious
10. Discernible
11. Disapprobation
12. Dispensation
13. Fractious
14. Sojourn
15. Wallowing
Chapter 1 Questions
1. What do you learn in this chapter about…
· Maycomb, Alabama?
· Atticus Finch?
· Jem Finch?
· Scout Finch?
2. What is Finch’s Landing?
3. When the routine of Jem, Scout, and Dill’s summer becomes tiresome, what idea doeas Dill have?
4. What did Boo Radley do that landed him in country jail temporarily?
5. How had Mr. Radley seen to it that his younger son Arthur (Boo) caused no further trouble in Maycomb?
6. Who is Calpurnia? What is she like?
7. According to Jem’s description, what does Boo look like?
8. What act of “courage” on Jem’s part ends this chapter?
9. Review the information about Dill. What kind of person is he? List several of your conclusions. What do you know about his background that might account for these aspects of his character?
10. What are some strengths and weaknesses of Atticus’ parenting?
11. Compare/Contrast Miss Caroline and Atticus’s attitudes about education?
Chapters 2-4 Study Guide
Working with Idioms: Explain these figures of speech or at least make an attempt
1. imaginations run away with you
2. my stars
3. starting off on the wrong foot
4. high and mighty
5. I’d fix her
6. turns ‘em loose
7. in a pig’s ear
8. tan you
Knowledge Questions
Chapter 2
1. What does Scout get in trouble for on her first day of school? List 3 things.
2. How does Miss Fisher feel at the end of her first day of teaching? How do you know?
3. What are the Cunninghams like?
Chapter 3
4. How does Scout solve her problem with Walter Cunningham?
5. How does Jem’s solve Scout’s problem with Walter Cunningham?
6. Why can’t Walter pass the first grade?
7. After Calpurnia makes Scout leave the table, what lecture does she give Scout? What social role is Calpurnia serving for Scout?
8. What scared and shocked Miss Caroline? (What is another name for this creature?)
9. What agreement does Atticus make with Scout when he heard that her teacher did not want him to teach her any more about reading?
10. Find an example of Scout’s sense of humor thus far.
Chapter 4
11. What is the first gift that appears in the knothole of the oak tree? What other gifts do the children find? How do they react to what they found?
12. What new info does Dill provide about his father?
13. How has the Boo Radley game changed?
14. When Scout rolls into the Radley front yard in the tire, what does she hear?
15. What is the neighborhood opinion of Mrs. Dubose?
Analysis Questions
Chapter 2
1. Who do you think is more to blame for the trouble on the first day of school, Scout or the teacher?
2. Given Miss Fisher’s first activity with the first-graders (reading about the family cat), explain the irony in her reprimand to Scout: “Lets’s not let our imaginations run away with us, dear?”
3. What do the “errors” Scout commits the first day have in common with one another? What does this tell you about Scout’s first six years of life?
Chapter 3
4. The narrator tells us, “In Maycomb County, hunting out of season was a misdemeanor at law, a capital felony in the eyes of the populace.”
a. Explain this in your own words.
b. Why do you think the populace would feel this way in 1935?
c. What does this statement tell you about the people of Maycomb?
Chapter 4
5. Who do you think put the gifts in the tree? Why?
6. What evidence is there that Jem is changing? Give several examples.