John Henry

cverner09
Jan 13, 2015
1 min read

Our read aloud for today was John Henry by Julius lester and illustrated by Jerry Pinkney.

(click on the book cover to be redirected to Amazon.com for bibliography info and to purchase the book!)

In the Writing Workshop...

Our focus this week was detail in a text. To get a better grip on understanding detail, we start with our senses:

Sight- what do you see in the story?

Touch- what can you feel?

Sound- what do you hear?

Taste- what are you tasting?

Smell- what do you smell?

We took away the obvious senses in this story (sight and sound) and used one of the remaining three senses to write in detail what we are touching, smelling, or tasting!

... The story of John Henry made me smell the fear of everyone around him. As such a powerful man with so much strength, those around him give off a fearful aroma...

We then listened to a Bruce Springsteen song titled "John Henry", using another sense, and to gain another perspective on this man's life.

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We discussed in class whether it was too much to ask a Kindergartner to write about anything they want to write about, and we came up with a solution that younger students do their best work when they can draw about it first.