The Glorious Flight

If you are following along with the curriculum, take a moment to ask about their Thanksgiving Holiday.

Then, make sure you have a World Map set up behind you, and take a moment to review the Geography from the last few books.

• Who can find New England (from Cranberry Thanksgiving)
• Who can find Virginia (from All Those Secrets of the World)
• Who can find Japan, located on the continent of Asia (from Grandfather’s Journey)
• Who can find the Appalachian Mountains (from Daniel’s Duck, Amber on the Mountain, and When I Was Young in the Mountains)

Take a moment to review and point to the 5 Oceans (Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Artic, Southern (Southern is a newly classified ocean, in the southern part of the globe (around Antarctica) which was new to me).

Take a moment to review and point to the 7 continents (N. America, S. America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Austrailia, Antarctica)

Take a moment to review the Continent we live on, the Country we live in, the State we live in, the City we live in …

Today’s Story is located on the continent of Europe, in the Countries of England and France. (point out the continent and country as you introduce the story)

Who has been on an airplane?
Have we always been able to fly?

No – for thousands of years people watched the birds in the sky and longed to be able to fly. In the early 1900’s  – about 100 years ago – people started to think maybe this could be possible.

In America – Wright Brothers

But in Europe there were other men working on airplanes too. In France, there was a man named Louis Bleriot who was determined to create an airplane.

A good pic to show the class – or print out if you’d prefer

Our story today is a true story (a good time to mention Non-Fiction vs Fictrion) of a real man and a real adventure that he took for the first time.

Today’s story is called, The Glorious Flight.While we read the story today, we are going to be looking for two things:

1) We’re going to try to find how many tries it took before Mr. Bleriot could fly his airplane.
2) We’re going to try to pay attention to descriptive words that the authors use in the story, to help make the story more interesting.

For more history of Louis Bleriot, this YouTube clip, below has a lot of great pictures and stories from his early life.

Before the class: Write the numbers 1-11 on the board. Write the Romans numbers I-XI on the board below them. Write the ordinal numbers (first, second, third, fourth, etc) on the board below them. This book provides a practical way to introduce all types of  numbers.

Print out the sheet below and cut it apart by the various planes. You can either hang on to the planes, or hand them out to the students to help you. Then, as you read about each plane, tape (or have the students tape) the plane below the matching attempt number. Emphasize “did this plane work?” “Did he give up?”  It may help to read about his different planes to be able to see what happened outside of the story. Around try 7 or 8, they did start working, but he kept tweaking to make them better (except version 10, where he started to copy the Wright brothers, but gave up before finishing and went back to his original mono-plane idea).

First, if you haven’t yet, go back to the map and show where the English channel is, and follow the path Bleriot flew with your finger.

• Next, ask the class – did Mr. Bleriot give up?
• What was it that made him want to try flying in the first place?  (Inspired by airship)
• What was it that helped him succeed? (Diligence, hard work)

If you’d like – this is a perfect place to introduce Thomas Edison’s famous quote,

“Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.”

Many people can have a good idea. Very few are willing to put in the time and effort to make it work.

Now its your turn – descriptive writing exercise

Tell the class to choose something they want to describe.Now, draw this thing, and write a few words (or sentences, depending on ability) to describe it. If they aren’t able to write at all, encourage them to draw their “description” or help them to spell the words. The point of this exercise isn’t to get them spelling or writing correctly, but to encourage them to see something, and be able to describe it.

Choose several objects in the classroom, and use many words to describe that object.

You could say … “Shoe”, or you could say, “Beautiful, Pink, Sparkly Shoe”.
You could say … “Chalk”, or you could say, “Light, Weightless, Dusty, Dry Chalk”.

For an example from the book, use the author’s description of the flying over the English Channel,

You could say … “English Channel”, or you could say,

“Twenty miles wide.
Black, tossing waves.
Fog and rain.
A very cold bath.
A long swim.
It is a dangerous prospect.”