English Language Arts
Read Aloud Counting on Katherine: How Katherine Johnson Saved Apollo 13
https://vimeo.com/showcase/6880152/video/398679803
Opening Move / Book Introduction: This book is a biography about an important woman who worked for NASA in the 1960s. Let’s think about life for women and African Americans at that time. What do you know about segregation and equal rights?
Katherine became so important to the NASA space missions, which were aimed at exploration of the moon, that she had a book written about her. Yet, many of us have not even heard of her.. Listen for what traits and accomplishments made Katherine such an important part of NASA.
Stopping Point #1pg5 “She catapulted right past her brother!” What does catapulted mean? Let’s look back at the text. It says, “She was so bright, she skipped three whole grades. She catapulted right past her brother! (He wasn’t very happy about that.)”. From the picture, we can see her brother is older. If she skipped 3 grades, she moved right past him in school, or shot passed him like a rock being thrown by a catapult.
Stopping Point #2: pg 15 Why is the word computer written in quotation marks in this sentence: “She worked as a “computer” (electronic computers were not widely used yet), calculating long series of numbers.” This shows the word computer is being used in a different way. We know of computers today but this means her work was to compute or calculate numbers to solve problems.
Stopping Point #3: pg 25 How is Katherine feeling about being asked to do her calculations all over again- and perfectly? What clues let us know how she is feeling? She rolls up her sleeves. What does that tell us? She is ready for hard work. She took a deep breath. She could be feeling anxious or serious about the task.
Writing about Reading related to the read aloud text:
Use your Writers Notebook to complete the prompt below. Add the book title as your header and the date. If your teacher uses Google Classroom, you may begin typing your responses in a new document.
Write a paragraph (s) to answer one of these questions:
1.What character traits made Katherine so successful? Use evidence from the story to explain your thinking.
2. How did Katherine show resiliency throughout her life? Think about the challenges she had to face that she overcame.