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Flipped · Garden Heights
Part 4
for Flipped · Part 4 · Chapters 7–8
8 Parts40 min
What Happens in Part 4
In Chapter 7, Bryce Loski finds that Juli Baker has stopped speaking to him after the eggs, and cannot tell whether that is a relief. His grandfather, Chet Duncan, who has been almost silent since moving in, wants to talk about Juli and is plainly unimpressed by what Bryce did. Chet then puts on work clothes, crosses the street, and begins clearing the Baker yard beside her, while Bryce watches from a window, jealous and bewildered. Garrett makes a joke, Bryce goes along with it, and Rick Loski has opinions about a man working on somebody else’s rented property. Chapter 8 gives Juli’s side. She comes home humiliated, looks at the yard as the street must, and asks why it is never fixed. The answer is the house is rented and the landlord will not maintain it, and that most of Robert Baker’s pay goes to the care of his brother, Uncle David. Trina Baker cries; Juli decides the yard is her own job and starts work — and Chet Duncan joins her.
What We Will Learn
Section
What you will practice
Vocabulary
Words for property and pride: tenant, obligation, neglect, hypocrisy, dignity…
Literary Elements
Setting used as evidence, a symbol repaired on stage, and a foil for Bryce’s father
Cross-Curricular
Property and neighborhoods — who owns a yard, who must maintain it, and who judges it
Chapter Summary
Ch.
What happens
7
Get a Grip, Man — Bryce narrates. After the eggs, Juli stops speaking to him and he cannot decide whether that is a relief. His grandfather, Chet Duncan, who has barely spoken since moving in, suddenly wants to talk about Juli, and is unimpressed by what Bryce did. Then Chet puts on work clothes, crosses the street, and starts clearing the Baker yard beside her — hauling, mowing, planting — while Bryce watches from a window and feels an odd jealousy that a grandfather who says nothing to him spends whole afternoons over there. Garrett has a joke about it, Rick has an opinion about it, and Bryce has neither an answer nor the nerve to go outside.
8
The Yard — Juli narrates. Humiliated, she comes home and looks at her own yard the way the street must: overgrown, patched, and shabby. When she asks why her family never fixes it, the answer is one nobody had explained. The house is rented and the landlord will not maintain it, and most of what her father earns goes to the care of his brother, Uncle David, who has a developmental disability. Her mother cries; her father talks it through with her honestly. Juli decides the yard is now her job and starts hauling and cutting alone — until Chet Duncan walks over and works beside her.
Part 1
Vocabulary
Study 10 key words from Chapters 7–8, then answer each question.
📚Knowledge Bank · The Words a Property Uses
Civics & Language · Property WordsPart 4 turns on words that decide who may touch a yard. A tenant rents a home from an owner and gains the right to live there, not the right to remake the grounds. The owner is the landlord, and the written agreement between them is a lease, which usually splits the work: routine mowing to the person living there, real repair and landscaping to the person holding the deed. When the deed holder simply declines, the result looks exactly like neglect from the sidewalk, though the family inside may be doing everything the agreement allows. Cities push back with an ordinance, a local law that can require an overgrown lot to be cut, though enforcement lands on the deed holder rather than on the family living inside. Watch how carefully Juli’s father chooses the word obligation for what he pays toward his brother. Money that leaves a household quietly explains most of what a street reads as laziness.
resentmentn.Ch.7
A bitter feeling about being treated unfairly
“His resentment made no sense, since nobody had actually taken anything from him.”
hypocrisyn.Ch.7
Claiming standards that you do not follow yourself
“There is a quiet hypocrisy in judging a lawn you have never once offered to mow.”
neglectn.Ch.7
A failure to care for something that needs attention
“From the sidewalk the yard looked like neglect rather than like arithmetic.”
bewilderedadj.Ch.7
Completely puzzled and unable to make sense of something
“He watched from the window, bewildered that anyone would volunteer for that.”
grudgingadj.Ch.7
Given unwillingly and without warmth
“A grudging nod across a street is not the same thing as an apology.”
tenantn.Ch.8
A person who pays rent to live in a property somebody else owns
“A tenant may love a yard and still have no right to change it.”
obligationn.Ch.8
Something a person is bound by duty to do
“He treats his brother’s care as an obligation rather than a sacrifice.”
dignityn.Ch.8
The quality of deserving respect
“She had never once thought about the dignity of her own front yard.”
restorev.Ch.8
To bring something back to its earlier good condition
“It takes one weekend to wreck a yard and a whole season to restore it.”
shabbyadj.Ch.8
Worn out and in poor condition
“Shabby is a word other people use about a house you happen to live in.”
ⓘ 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 person who pays rent to live in someone else’s property is a ___.Ch.8
2Claiming standards that you do not follow yourself is ___.Ch.7
3‘Neglect’ means a failure to care for something that needs attention.Ch.7
4Something a person is bound by duty to do is an ___.Ch.8
5Fill in each blank with the correct word.Ch.7–8
Word choices:restoreresentmentshabbygrudging- some words will not be used
It takes one weekend to wreck a yard and a whole season to it.
His made no sense, since nobody had taken anything from him.
6A ‘grudging’ favor is one done cheerfully and with real warmth.Ch.7
7Someone completely puzzled and unable to make sense of things is ___.Ch.7
8‘Dignity’ means the quality of deserving respect.Ch.8
9Fill in the blanks with the correct words.Ch.7–8
Word choices:tenanthypocrisyshabbyneglect- some words will not be used
A may love a yard and still have no right to change it.
From the sidewalk the yard looked like rather than like arithmetic.
10Something worn out and in poor condition is ___.Ch.8
Part 2
Comprehension
Show you understood what happens in Chapters 7–8.
📋Knowledge Bank · Who Is Supposed to Mow It?
Civics · Renting and RepairRoughly a third of American households rent, and a rented yard belongs to nobody in the simple sense. The owner holds the deed and the person living there holds a lease, a written agreement that divides the work. Most leases hand routine chores to the household — mowing, watering, hauling the cans out — while trees, fences, drainage, and anything expensive stay with the owner. Renters are also usually barred from major changes, so planting a hedge or tearing out a dead shrub can require written permission. That is why an absent owner can strand a careful family behind a yard that embarrasses them: the people who care cannot act, and the person who can act does not care. Local governments provide the only real lever, an ordinance that lets a city cut an overgrown lot and send the bill to the deed holder. Tenants themselves have no such lever at all. Improving a yard you rent is generosity, not maintenance.
1How does Juli treat Bryce at the start of Chapter 7?Ch.7
2What does Chet Duncan do that surprises Bryce?Ch.7
3Why does Bryce feel jealous watching his grandfather and Juli?Ch.7
4What does Juli learn about her family’s house in Chapter 8?Ch.8
5Write the numbers 1–5 in the boxes to show the correct order of events in Chapters 7–8. Number 1 = what happens first.Ch.7–8
Her father explains the rented house and the cost of Uncle David’s care.
Juli decides the yard is her job and starts clearing it by herself.
Juli goes home humiliated and looks at her own yard the way the street sees it.
Chet Duncan crosses the street in work clothes and begins working beside her.
She asks her parents why the yard has never been fixed, and an argument follows.
6The Bakers own their house, so the condition of the yard is entirely their own choice.Ch.8
7Where does most of Robert Baker’s money go?Ch.8
8Juli decides that fixing the yard is now her own responsibility.Ch.8
9How does Bryce respond to Garrett’s joke about the situation?Ch.7
10Chapters 7 and 8 show the same weeks in the neighborhood from both sides.Ch.7–8
Part 3
Literary Elements
Understanding HOW and WHY Wendelin Van Draanen tells the story across Chapters 7–8.
🧠Knowledge Bank · The Yard as Evidence
Literary Craft · Setting and SymbolSetting in this novel is never decoration. The Baker yard is introduced through other people’s eyes, so it functions first as evidence: the street reads weeds and peeling paint as proof of who the Bakers are, and the reader is quietly invited to agree. Chapter 8 then supplies the accounting the street never asked for, and the same weeds mean something entirely different. Nothing in the yard has changed; only the reader has. That reversal is the engine of Part 4. Once Juli picks up tools, the yard becomes a symbol, because repairing it in public is a way of taking back something the neighborhood had already decided about her family. Chet Duncan works as a foil for Rick Loski at the same time: two men on one street, one crossing it with a shovel and the other with a verdict. Van Draanen never states the comparison. She simply arranges the two of them so the reader cannot avoid making it herself.
Setting as evidence
The Baker yard is treated by the street as proof of character, so the novel makes the reader learn what the yard actually proves.
Symbol
Clearing and replanting the yard is Juli reclaiming something publicly, and the work stands for the dignity the family has been quietly denied.
Foil
Chet Duncan sets Rick Loski in relief: same street, same yard, one man crosses it with tools and the other with an opinion.
1The Baker yard is presented first through the neighbors’ eyes so that readers ___.Ch.7–8
2Fill in each blank with the correct literary term.Ch.7–8
Word choices:symbolfoilmeterrhyme- some words will not be used
An object that stands for a larger idea is a .
A character who highlights another by contrast is a .
3Chet Duncan mainly works in these chapters as ___.Ch.7
4Repairing the yard functions as a symbol of the Bakers reclaiming public respect.Ch.7–8
5Because Bryce narrates Chapter 7, the reader is expected to admire how he behaves.Ch.7–8
6The chapter title ‘Get a Grip, Man’ mainly reveals ___.Ch.7
7Fill in the blank with the correct literary term.Ch.7–8
Word choices:settingstanzapunrefrain- some words will not be used
The place where a story happens is its .
8Chapter 8 gives information about the Bakers that Chapter 7 never supplies.Ch.7–8
9Placing Juli’s explanation after Bryce’s window scene allows the author to ___.Ch.7–8
10Chapters 7 and 8 together mainly work to ___.Ch.7–8
Part 4
Think Deeper
Four deeper challenges — no single-word recall. Read, weigh the evidence, and reason it out.
💡Knowledge Bank · What a Street Thinks It Knows
Sociology & Ethics · Reading a HousePeople form opinions about a household from the outside in seconds, and real-estate professionals have a term for the effect: curb appeal. Research on neighborhoods finds that a trimmed lawn is read as evidence of effort, income, and even honesty, though it may prove only that somebody owns a mower and had a free Saturday. Sociologists call a shortcut like that a signal, and signals are easy to fake and easy to misread. The reading is fast, confident, and cheap, which is exactly the combination that makes it unreliable. What it cannot see is the arithmetic: whether the house is rented, whether an owner refuses to spend, whether a paycheck is carrying a cost nobody advertises. Part 4 hands the reader that hidden arithmetic and the yard changes meaning without a single blade of grass moving. The ethical test is simple and uncomfortable. Before treating an appearance as character, ask what a person would have to know to be right — and whether anybody actually asked.
Think back over these two chapters. A girl comes home stung by what a neighbor said about her yard, and instead of arguing she stands at the curb and tries to see the place the way strangers do: brush, bare patches, a fence somebody gave up on. She asks her parents a simple question and gets an answer nobody had offered her before — the house is not theirs, the owner will not spend a dollar on it, and most of her father’s pay is carrying the cost of caring for his brother. Then she goes out with borrowed tools and starts on it anyway. Across the street a boy watches from a window while his grandfather, who hardly speaks in his own house, puts on work clothes and walks over to help. Two chapters, one yard, and everything that explains it hidden indoors.
Original passage written for Garden Heights — not a quotation from the novel.
1Claim: “Chapters 7 and 8 argue that the neighborhood was judging the Bakers on information it did not have.” — choose the two details that best prove it.Claim & Evidence
2What the street can see, or What only the family knows? Tap each detail to send it left or right.Sort into two
◄ What the street can seeWhat only the family knows ►
3Match each cause to its result. For each cause, pick its result.Cause & Effect
Juli comes home humiliated about the eggs→
She asks her parents why the yard is never fixed→
Juli decides the yard has become her responsibility→
Chet Duncan takes an interest in the Baker family→
4Fill both blanks to complete the reasoning.Build the Argument
Van Draanen waits until Chapter 8 to explain the Baker yard because , which shows that .
Part 5
Standardized Test
Reading passage · The Yard People See · 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
TOEFLInsert Text — where a given sentence best fits among four marked spots
SATInference — a conclusion the passage supports without ever stating it outright
What Curb Appeal Really Judges
Every lot in a neighborhood has an invisible outline. The setback is the strip of ground a local rule keeps clear between a building and the property line, which is why houses along one street tend to sit the same distance from the sidewalk. The property lines themselves are recorded on a map at the county office; they are not decided by whatever fence somebody put up years ago. Surveyors get hired precisely because owners are so often wrong about where their land stops.
Ownership is rarely absolute either. A utility company usually holds an easement across part of a lot, a legal right to cross or dig for its lines even though the ground belongs to somebody else. Cities also regulate upkeep, and many have a weed abatement rule that lets the city cut an overgrown lot and bill whoever holds the deed. When a house is rented, the lease decides who mows and who repairs.
None of that is visible from the street, which is the problem. Agents talk about curb appeal because buyers form an opinion of a house within seconds, and neighbors do the same about the people inside it. Studies of housing find that a tidy yard gets read as evidence of character, income, and effort, when it may prove only that somebody owns a mower and had a free Saturday. The judgment is cheap to make and slow to correct. A street can be entirely wrong about a family for years without ever asking one question.
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, where are property lines recorded?TOEFL · Factual Information
3In the passage, a setback is ___.SAT · Words in Context
4In the passage, an easement is ___.TOEFL · Vocabulary
5Insert Text (TOEFL). Look at the four squares [1]–[4] in the excerpt below. They show where this sentence could be added: “A neighbor who mistakes a rental for a choice has judged a family for a decision somebody else made.”
When a house is rented, the lease decides who mows and who repairs. [1] Most leases hand routine yard work to the household but leave trees, fences, and real landscaping to the person holding the deed. [2] A landlord who refuses that half of the bargain can leave a careful family living behind a yard that looks careless. [3] Cities sometimes step in anyway and send the cleanup bill straight to the owner. [4]
Where would the sentence fit best?TOEFL · Insert Text
6In the passage, abatement most nearly means ___.SAT · Words in Context
7According to the passage, what do studies of housing find?TOEFL · Factual Information
8The passage suggests that a neglected yard ___.SAT · Inference
9It can be inferred that judgments based on curb appeal ___.SAT · Inference
10According to the passage, a utility easement allows a company to ___.TOEFL · Factual Information
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 4 “What the Sidewalk Cannot See”
The street decides who the Bakers are by looking at their yard, and every fact that would change that opinion is inside the house. Write about a time you or your family were judged on something visible — a house, a car, clothes, a grade — while the real explanation stayed private. 6–10 sentences. End by naming one question somebody could have asked that would have changed the whole picture.
You can start with: “From the outside it looked like one thing, and nobody ever asked about the rest…”
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 4 Complete!
You finished Chapters 7–8 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.
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.
