Hero

We continue to talk about the idea of a hero.  Right now we are looking at our third literary hero, the Red Cross Knight.  Last week we finished reading Margaret Hodges amazing book St. George and the Dragon.

The text and the illustrations in this Caldecott winning book were stunning.  Today we continued to talk about the Red Cross Knight but this time we read a different version of the story.  The text that we read today was Jane Yolen's poem Why Dragon's?  

I really love looking at two texts that tell the same story.  It allows us to compare and contrast the texts.  This is exactly what we did today as we read.  The first time we read the poem the class just read for enjoyment.  On the second reading I asked the class to highlight anything that was similar in the poem to the book that we had read.  Then for our third reading the class grabbed a different color highlighter and searched for anything different in the two texts.  I was amazed at all the class was able to tell me about the differences and similarities between the two stories.

Tomorrow we are going to take this idea of looking at multiple texts to the next level and look at how the story of the Red Cross Knight was told through art.  We will look at a painting by Raphael and a sculpture by Donatello.  

I hope you are all having a great start to your week.