a.) Title: Flying
Awards: None
b.) About the book:
The Donald Crews book Flying is a simple beginning reader’s book. The purpose of this story is to demonstrate what it is like to fly in a passenger plane. The propeller plane first takes off from an airport, and ascends above the city. With very few (and simple words) Crews describes the plane flying through the clouds as well as landing at night. There are very interesting and big pictures that accurately depict the text, and is great for young readers.
c.) Themes:
As stated before, Crews focuses on transportation as a theme. Flying is just a book in a series covering different modes of transportation.
d.) Getting Ready:
If my class was to do a unit on different modes of transportation, Flying would be toward the end of the unit since it is one of the least common for students to have taken at such a young age. Prior to reading Flying, I would have already read Donald Crews’ other books (i.e. Freight Train, School Bus, Flying) aloud. Before revealing the book Flying I would ask a few questions that would lead students to guess what the next transportation method we would be learning about is. Such as, “Does anyone know what a propeller is? What are some things that you would find at an airport? What is a vehicle that we haven’t covered, AND has wings?”
e.) Questions for Discussion:
“Are airplanes slow or fast?” (Answer: Fast!)
“So, if I wanted to go all the way around the world, what kind of vehicle would I want to take? An airplane or a car?” (Answer: A plane since it flies faster than a car drives.)
“What are some uses for airplanes?” (Answer: Military, travel, airshows, fun, skydiving)
f.) Questions for Written Response:
“If you could fly an airplane, where would you want to go, and why?”
“What kind of airplane would you like to have? Propeller? Jetliner? Fighter Jet? Military bomber?”
g.) Extension Activities:
1. At the front of the classroom there is a world map. Each student will put a bulletin board pin in to the destination that they wrote for the prompt, “If you could fly an airplane, where would you want to go, and why?” A string will be tied to a pin in our location, and then we will ‘connect the dots’ and at each student’s destination the student could say why they chose that place to fly to.
2. From the writing prompt, “What kind of airplane would you like to have? Propeller? Jetliner? Fighter Jet? Military bomber?” students will be able to draw their dream plane. For their drawings, each student will label unique parts about their creation, as well as the standard parts of an airplane.