Flipped · Garden Heights

Part 2

for Flipped · Part 2 · Chapters 3–4

8 Parts40 min

What Happens in Part 2

In Chapter 3, Bryce reports that his grandfather, Chet Duncan, moved in with the Loskis in seventh grade, after his wife’s death, and now sits by the window watching the Bakers’ overgrown yard. Bryce also explains the sycamore at the bus stop, where Juli used to perch and shout down how far off the bus was. The morning the crew came with chainsaws, Juli climbed up and would not leave; Bryce boarded the bus and rode to school, came home to half a tree, and never managed to say he was sorry. The next day Chet hands him the paper with Juli’s photograph on the front and tells him to get to know her, which only irritates Bryce. Chapter 4 gives the tree to Juli: the fifth-grade kite, the view, the years of climbing, the chainsaws, and her father riding up in a lift to carry her out. Afterward Robert Baker gives her his painting of the sycamore.

What We Will Learn

Section	What you will practice
Vocabulary	Words for height, land, and loss: vacant, canopy, panorama, defiant, grief…
Literary Elements	A setting that turns into a symbol, vantage point as point of view, and what a narrator leaves out
Cross-Curricular	Trees — how a sycamore grows and what a mature tree is worth to a street

Chapter Summary

Ch.	What happens
3	Buddy, Beware! — Bryce narrates. In seventh grade his grandfather, Chet Duncan, moves in after his wife’s death, and Bryce cannot make him out: he sits by the front window looking across at the Bakers’ overgrown yard and says almost nothing. Bryce also explains the sycamore at the bus stop, Juli’s perch, from which she used to shout down how far off the bus was. The morning a crew came with chainsaws, Juli climbed up and would not leave; Bryce got on the bus and rode to school, and by afternoon half the tree was gone. He wanted to tell her he was sorry and never did. The next day Chet hands him the newspaper with Juli’s photograph on the front page and tells him a neighbor like that is a rare thing — the first real conversation his grandfather has wanted, and it only irritates him.
4	The Sycamore Tree — Juli narrates. Her father, Robert Baker, lays bricks for a living and paints landscapes on his own time, and he keeps telling her that a painting comes to more than the parts inside it. In fifth grade she climbed the sycamore after a kite caught in its branches — the kite was Bryce’s, though she did not know it — and from the top she saw the whole valley and felt something she could not name. She climbed it for years, and had just invited her father up to see it for himself when the chainsaws arrived. Juli refuses to come down, a crowd gathers, and her father has to ride up in a lift to bring her out. For two weeks she bikes the long way to school rather than pass the lot, until he surprises her with his painting of the tree, which she hangs across from her bed.

Ch.

What happens

3

Buddy, Beware! — Bryce narrates. In seventh grade his grandfather, Chet Duncan, moves in after his wife’s death, and Bryce cannot make him out: he sits by the front window looking across at the Bakers’ overgrown yard and says almost nothing. Bryce also explains the sycamore at the bus stop, Juli’s perch, from which she used to shout down how far off the bus was. The morning a crew came with chainsaws, Juli climbed up and would not leave; Bryce got on the bus and rode to school, and by afternoon half the tree was gone. He wanted to tell her he was sorry and never did. The next day Chet hands him the newspaper with Juli’s photograph on the front page and tells him a neighbor like that is a rare thing — the first real conversation his grandfather has wanted, and it only irritates him.

4

The Sycamore Tree — Juli narrates. Her father, Robert Baker, lays bricks for a living and paints landscapes on his own time, and he keeps telling her that a painting comes to more than the parts inside it. In fifth grade she climbed the sycamore after a kite caught in its branches — the kite was Bryce’s, though she did not know it — and from the top she saw the whole valley and felt something she could not name. She climbed it for years, and had just invited her father up to see it for himself when the chainsaws arrived. Juli refuses to come down, a crowd gathers, and her father has to ride up in a lift to bring her out. For two weeks she bikes the long way to school rather than pass the lot, until he surprises her with his painting of the tree, which she hangs across from her bed.

Part 1

Vocabulary

Study 10 key words from Chapters 3–4, then answer each question.

🌳Knowledge Bank · Words for Height and Loss

Language & Botany · Tree WordsPart 2 moves the story up into a tree, so its words arrive from two directions at once: botany and mourning. A canopy is the spreading layer of leaves and branches a tree holds above the ground, and it explains how one old tree can shade a bus stop, a sidewalk, and half a yard together. Height gives Juli a vantage, the place a person watches from, and this novel means the word both ways at once: she is higher up, and she sees more. The lot itself is called vacant, which is a legal description rather than an honest one, since it records that nobody lives there and says nothing about what is standing there. When the crew arrives, staying put is defiance, an open refusal of an order she believes is wrong. What follows is grief, and the book uses that word for a tree exactly as it would for a person, because what she has lost is a place.

vacantadj.Ch.3

Empty; with nobody living on it and nothing built on it

“A vacant lot can still hold the most valuable thing on the street.”

spectaclen.Ch.3

A striking public display that draws a crowd of onlookers

“By nine that morning the tree had become a neighborhood spectacle.”

trespassv.Ch.3

To go onto land that belongs to someone else without permission

“Nobody worried about who might trespass on that lot until it was sold.”

dismissv.Ch.3

To treat something or someone as unimportant

“It costs nothing to dismiss a neighbor and years to take one seriously.”

cowardicen.Ch.3

A failure to do the brave or right thing out of fear

“Staying silent on the sidewalk felt to him like plain cowardice.”

panoraman.Ch.4

A wide, unbroken view of a whole area

“Forty feet (12.2 m) up, an ordinary town unfolded into a panorama.”

exhilaratingadj.Ch.4

Thrilling and full of energy; making you feel very alive

“She found the swaying of the highest branches exhilarating rather than frightening.”

canopyn.Ch.4

The spreading layer of leaves and branches a tree holds above the ground

“One old canopy shaded the bus stop, the sidewalk, and half a yard.”

defiantadj.Ch.4

Openly refusing to obey an order or a demand

“A defiant girl in a tree is harder to argue with than a lawyer.”

griefn.Ch.4

Deep sorrow that follows a serious loss

“Grief over a tree sounds silly to anyone who never climbed it.”

ⓘ The vocabulary words in this list are selected to help you understand and complete this workbook. Some may not appear verbatim in the original novel.

1A lot with nobody living on it and nothing built on it is ___.Ch.3

2A ‘spectacle’ is something so ordinary that nobody stops to look.Ch.3

3To go onto land that belongs to someone else without permission is to ___.Ch.3

4Fill in each blank with the correct word.Ch.3–4

Word choices:canopyvacantgriefdefiant- some words will not be used

One old shaded the bus stop, the sidewalk, and half a yard.

A lot can still hold the most valuable thing on the street.

5A wide, unbroken view of a whole area is a ___.Ch.4

6‘Cowardice’ means failing to do the brave thing because you are afraid.Ch.3

7Someone who openly refuses to obey an order is ___.Ch.4

8Fill in each blank with the correct word.Ch.3–4

Word choices:exhilaratingdismisstrespasspanorama- some words will not be used

She found the swaying of the highest branches rather than frightening.

It costs nothing to a neighbor and years to take one seriously.

9To ‘dismiss’ an idea is to study it carefully before deciding about it.Ch.3

10The spreading layer of leaves and branches above a tree’s trunk is its ___.Ch.4

Part 2

Comprehension

Show you understood what happens in Chapters 3–4.

🌿Knowledge Bank · How a Sycamore Gets That Big

Botany · Tree GrowthA tree grows in two directions at once. Buds at the tips of the twigs push it taller and wider each spring, while a thin sleeve of living cells just under the bark, called the cambium, wraps a fresh layer of wood around the whole trunk every year. Those yearly layers are the rings a cut stump shows, which is why a stump can be read like a calendar. The American sycamore is one of the fastest of the big shade trees: two or three feet (91 cm) of new height in a good year, well over a hundred feet (30.5 m) in a long life, and a trunk that two children together cannot reach around. Its pale, patchy look comes from bark too stiff to stretch, so it flakes away in plates, a habit botanists call exfoliating. The roots run wide instead of deep, mostly through the top few feet of soil, spreading out past the edge of the crown.

1Who comes to live with the Loskis in Chapter 3?Ch.3

2What does Chet show Bryce the day after the tree comes down?Ch.3

3Chet tells Bryce that a girl like Juli is nothing out of the ordinary.Ch.3

4Why did Juli first climb the sycamore, back in fifth grade?Ch.4

5Write the numbers 1–5 in the boxes to show the correct order of events in Chapters 3–4. Number 1 = what happens first.Ch.3–4

A crew arrives with chainsaws, and Juli climbs up and refuses to come down.
Her father rides up in a lift and brings her out of the tree.
In fifth grade Juli climbs the sycamore after a kite tangles in its branches.
She climbs it for years, calling down to the kids waiting at the bus stop.
The next day Chet shows Bryce the newspaper photo and tells him to know her.

6What does Juli find once she climbs high in the sycamore?Ch.4

7What does Bryce do the morning Juli will not leave the tree?Ch.3

8Bryce wanted to tell Juli he was sorry about the tree, but he never said it.Ch.3

9What does Juli’s father give her after the tree is gone?Ch.4

10After the tree comes down, Juli goes back to waiting at the bus stop as before.Ch.4

Part 3

Literary Elements

Understanding HOW and WHY Wendelin Van Draanen tells the story across Chapters 3–4.

🎨Knowledge Bank · When a Setting Turns Into a Symbol

Literary Craft · Symbol & VantageA setting is where a story happens; a symbol is an object that carries meaning past itself. The sycamore begins as the first and quietly becomes the second. For two chapters it is only a big, awkward tree on an empty lot, the kind of thing a reader skims past on the way to the plot. Then Juli climbs it, and the tree gathers up everything she values — nerve, solitude, a view nobody else bothered to look for — so that cutting it down stops being landscaping and becomes a loss the reader feels. Van Draanen also uses the tree to make point of view physical. Juli tells her chapter from the top; Bryce tells his from the sidewalk, and their vantage points differ by forty vertical feet and rather more than that in meaning. Watch what Bryce leaves out, too. His chapter passes over the morning hers cannot stop describing, and a reader learns as much from the omission.

Symbol

The sycamore starts as scenery and ends as a symbol: by the time the saws arrive it stands for Juli’s nerve, her solitude, and the view nobody else looked for.

Vantage point

Point of view becomes literal here. Juli narrates from the top of a tree and Bryce from the sidewalk, and their accounts differ by roughly the same distance.

Omission

What a first-person narrator skips is evidence too. Bryce’s chapter hurries past the morning Juli’s chapter cannot stop describing.

1In Chapters 3 and 4 the sycamore works mainly as ___.Ch.3–4

2A symbol can be an ordinary object that comes to carry a larger meaning.Ch.3–4

3Fill in each blank with the correct literary term.Ch.3–4

Word choices:symbolvantageomissionrhyme- some words will not be used

An object that carries meaning beyond itself is a .

The spot a narrator watches from is a point.

4Juli’s chapter dwells on the tree while Bryce’s hurries past it. That difference mainly shows ___.Ch.3–4

5Because Bryce narrates first, readers get the full story of the tree before Juli’s chapter.Ch.3–4

6Putting Juli high in the tree and Bryce down on the sidewalk lets the author ___.Ch.3–4

7Fill in the blank with the correct literary term.Ch.3–4

Word choices:omissionironysymbolsimile- some words will not be used

Leaving out something the reader needs is an .

8Bryce’s own chapter admits that he was there the morning Juli would not leave the tree.Ch.3

9Juli’s long description of the wind, the height, and the light works mainly to ___.Ch.4

10Read together, Chapters 3 and 4 show that one morning can ___.Ch.3–4

Part 4

Think Deeper

Four deeper challenges — no single-word recall. Read, weigh the evidence, and reason it out.

🏙Knowledge Bank · Who Owns a Street Tree?

Civics & Ethics · Property and CommunityLegally, the sycamore was somebody’s property, standing on a lot somebody had bought, and an owner who wants to build may generally clear the land. The benefits the tree produced, though, were never private. Shade fell across a public bus stop, cooler air drifted down the sidewalk, and roots and leaves slowed rainwater that would otherwise have run straight into the storm drains. Economists call a spillover like that an externality: real value landing on people who neither paid for it nor could ever charge for it. Cities have written law to catch the mismatch. Many now require a permit before a large tree comes down, protect exceptional old trees under heritage rules, and make a builder plant replacements. None of that helps Juli, who holds no claim on that lot and knows it. Her protest is not a legal argument; it is the older claim that something a whole street depends on has stopped being purely private.

Think back over these two chapters. There is a tree on an empty lot at the top of a street, and for most of the neighborhood it is scenery — something to park beside, something that drops leaves in the fall. One girl climbs it in fifth grade after a stuck kite and finds a view of the whole valley waiting up there, so she keeps going back, a little higher every year. Then the lot is sold, a crew arrives with chainsaws, and she will not come down. A crowd gathers on the sidewalk below her. One boy in that crowd climbs onto the school bus instead and rides away, comes home to half a tree, thinks about apologizing, and says nothing — until his grandfather hands him the newspaper the next morning and the question arrives anyway.

Original passage written for Garden Heights — not a quotation from the novel.

1Claim: “The morning under the sycamore mattered far more to Juli than to Bryce.” — choose the two details that best prove it.Claim & Evidence

2What Bryce’s chapter records, or What Juli’s chapter records? Tap each detail to send it left or right.Sort into two

◄ What Bryce’s chapter recordsWhat Juli’s chapter records ►

3Match each cause to its result. For each cause, pick its result.Cause & Effect

A kite catches in the branches of the sycamore→

The empty lot is sold and a house is going up on it→

The local paper runs Juli’s picture on the front page→

Juli bikes the long way to school for two weeks→

4Fill both blanks to complete the reasoning.Build the Argument

Van Draanen gives the sycamore a whole chapter of its own because , which shows that .

Part 5

Standardized Test

Reading passage · What a Tree Does · Words in Context & Central Ideas · SAT & TOEFL-style practice

🎯 What this section practices

You already have these skills from the sections above — here they appear in the exact question types the SAT and TOEFL use. Read the passage (the highlighted words are tested below), then answer. Tap an answer to select it, then tap it again to confirm — you can change your choice until you confirm.

SATCentral Ideas — the main point of the passage as a whole
TOEFLFactual Information — a fact stated directly in the passage
SATWords in Context — what a word means the way this passage uses it
TOEFLVocabulary — the meaning of a tested word as this passage uses it
SATInference — a conclusion the passage supports without ever stating it outright
TOEFLProse Summary — choosing the three sentences that capture the main ideas

The Cooling Power of Shade Trees

The American sycamore is one of the biggest trees in the eastern United States, and one of the quickest. A young one can add two or three feet (91 cm) of height in a single good year, and an old one may stand more than a hundred feet (30.5 m) tall on a trunk two children together cannot reach around. What matters most to a street, though, is not the height but the canopy — the spreading layer of leaves and branches a tree holds above the ground. Sycamore leaves are broad, some as wide as a dinner plate, so one old tree can roof an entire yard.

That canopy does steady work. It blocks sunlight before it reaches roofs and pavement, and shaded walls keep a house measurably cooler through a summer afternoon. The tree cools the air directly as well: water pulled up by the roots escapes as vapor through tiny pores in the leaves, a process called transpiration, and evaporating water carries heat away with it. Leaves and branches also catch rain, slowing water that would otherwise rush down a street into the storm drains.

Cities have learned to put numbers on all of this. Arborists appraise a tree much as an inspector appraises a building — measuring the trunk, judging its health, weighing where it stands — and one healthy shade tree in a good spot is often valued in the thousands of dollars. Studies of home sales keep finding that lots on tree-lined streets sell for more than identical lots without them. The one thing the arithmetic cannot supply is time. A sapling planted the afternoon a mature tree comes down needs thirty or forty years to do the work the old tree was doing that morning.

Original passage written for Garden Heights — not a quotation from the novel.

1What is the main idea of the passage?SAT · Central Ideas

2According to the passage, a young sycamore can add ___.TOEFL · Factual Information

3In the passage, canopy most nearly means ___.SAT · Words in Context

4In the passage, transpiration refers to ___.TOEFL · Vocabulary

5In the passage, to appraise a tree is to ___.SAT · Words in Context

6The passage says the air itself is cooled directly by ___.TOEFL · Factual Information

7The passage suggests that planting a young tree the day an old one comes down ___.SAT · Inference

8Prose Summary (TOEFL). A mature shade tree does measurable work for the street it stands on, and that work cannot be replaced quickly. This TOEFL task lists six sentences; choose the THREE that best capture the passage’s main ideas. The other three do not belong — they state minor details or ideas the passage does not present.TOEFL · Prose Summary

9According to the passage, arborists value a tree by measuring the trunk and also ___.TOEFL · Factual Information

10The passage most strongly suggests that a mature street tree ___.SAT · Inference

Part 6 · Optional

Creative Writing

A bonus challenge to practice your English. Take your time and have fun with it.

About This Section

This writing task is optional and is not part of your auto-graded score. The feedback below checks only the basics — length, spelling, and grammar — not whether your ideas are right or wrong. It is meant for classroom discussion and creative practice, so feel free to use your imagination!

Writing Task — Part 2 “The Tree You Would Sit In”

Juli spends years in a tree nobody else on the street bothered to look at, and loses it in one morning. Think of a place that matters to you more than it would to a stranger walking past — a room, a corner of a park, a route you take, a bench. Describe it so that a reader who has never seen it understands why you would be sorry to lose it. 6–10 sentences. End with one detail that only somebody who spent time there would know.

You can start with: “Nobody else would have looked twice at it, and that was part of why I went…”

0 / 40 words minimum

🗣 Teach It · Just for Fun (optional)

No right or wrong — close the screen and tell someone nearby what happened in this part. Can’t find anyone? Tell yourself out loud. The moment you teach it, you truly understand it.

Part 2 Complete!

You finished Chapters 3–4 of Flipped.

Here are your auto-graded results:

-

points out of 100

🗣 Teach It · Just for Fun (optional)

Teach it to someone

The best last step is to teach it. In your own words, explain what happened — retell a favorite scene, teach a character’s big choice, or sum up the main idea for a parent, friend, or classmate. When you can teach it clearly, you truly own it.

Move on to Part 3 →

Independent study guide by Garden Heights. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Wendelin Van Draanen. Contains original analysis only; no text from the novel is reproduced. Reference text: This workbook follows Wendelin Van Draanen’s classic text (the standard Puffin edition sold worldwide). Revised 2023 UK editions change some wording and may not match the vocabulary studied here.