Comprehension

1. The boys are upset at the idea of the girls carrying the water bucket because that job has always been “theirs” and they don’t want their opportunity to skip school to be taken away from them. I think it’s also because the boys want the job to be theirs only and because of the girls gender they don’t want a girl to be carrying the water bucket.

2. Some strategies the boys use to pressure the girls into giving in are bullying them and not letting the girls play softball. The girls don’t enjoy the fact that all the boys are picking on them, but they stick together and stand up for each other. Some girls get mad at Alma for bringing up the idea of girls carrying the water bucket in front of the class. “Oh Alma”, mourned Minnie Halliday, “why couldn’t you just have kept your mouth shut?” (pg. 8)

Elements of Fiction

3. A student is telling the story in first person view. She likes Miss Ralston and thinks she’s a good teacher. “Now our teacher that year was named Miss Ralston and even though she came from River Hibbert we all liked her quite a lot.” (pg.5) She agrees with the idea of girls carrying the water bucket because they might get a chance to skip school and do something real and fun too. “We, too, might get to skip school for half an hour at a time, that we, too, might get to sneak into Roswell’s store on the way back and, most dizzying thought of all, that we too might get to do something real.” (pg. 6)

4. The conflict is person vs person because the conflict is between the girls and the boys. The boys have always been the ones carrying the water bucket but one day a girl asks the teacher why girls couldn’t carry it. They knew that the girls might get a chance to do their job, so they start to pick on them. The setting of the story is at a rural village and school around the 1950’s where physical punishments in school were allowed. They have to get water from a well located at a railway station so that’s how we know the school is somewhere isolated.

5. I think the protagonist is the girls because they are the main characters who are trying to make a change. While the boys are the antagonists because they are trying to stop the girls from carrying the water bucket. The boys pick on the girls and bully them in the hope of getting them to stop the idea of girls going for the water.

6. Everything changed on that Friday because for the first time ever in the school, girls were going to be carrying the water bucket. In the last paragraph Miss Ralston says, “next week Alma Niles and Joyce Shipley will go for the water.” I think the theme of the story/message that the author is saying is that girls should be allowed to do what boys do. Their opportunities to do things shouldn’t be limited just because of their gender.

Vocabulary

1. galvanized:  Iron or steel, coated with a layer of zinc.
2. remotest:  A chance or possibility unlikely to occur.
3. intoxicated:  Emotionally excited, exhilarated, or elated for something.
4. ominous:  Showing the impression that something unpleasant is going to happen.
5. supplementary:  Enhancing or completing something.
6. forlornly:  Alone and unhappy.
7. earnestly:  With sincere and intense conviction.
8. gloating:  Dwelling on one’s own success or another’s misfortune with self-satisfaction or malignant pleasure.
9. transfixed: To become motionless with astonishment, surprise, or fear.
10. pirouettings: A full turn of the body on the point of the toe or the ball of the foot.