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Worksheets and No Prep Teaching Resources

"A Very Special Man..... Who Flies"

"A Very Special Man..... Who Flies"
Reading Level
     edHelper's suggested reading level:   grades 3 to 4
     Flesch-Kincaid grade level:   3.17

Vocabulary
     challenging words:    entire, orbit, flight, working, planes, name, jobs, already, flying, parade, okay, important, third, earth, city, enough
     content words:    Susie Johnson, Cambridge Elementary School, United States, Right Stuff, John Glenn

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"A Very Special Man..... Who Flies"
By Dawn A. Adams 		  
1     Hi, my name is Susie Johnson, and I go to third grade at Cambridge Elementary School in Cambridge, Ohio. I want to tell you about a very special man who was born in my town. There is no other man in the entire United States like Mr. Glenn. Mr. Glenn went to school for a very long time and graduated with a bachelor's degree. He went to naval school where he learned how to fly. That is part of why I call him the man who flies. Mr. Glenn went into the military, and he spent a long time flying planes to protect our country. He is a very brave man because he was given a lot of medals for the job he did.
 
2     Mr. Glenn was the first man to complete a supersonic flight (that means going really, really, really fast) on a plane across the country. In 1959, way back in the olden days, Mr. Glenn went to NASA. That's the place where all the astronauts go so they can fly in the space ships. When he was working for NASA, he was put in charge of working with a group of men. (Being in charge is like your mom or dad telling you what to do. It doesn't matter what you say; they make the final decision.) Well, Mr. Glenn was put in charge of a mission. That's a flight that is planned to go out and get information about something important in space. He was the pilot, or the person who flies the plane, of a spaceship called Friendship 7. Mr. Glenn flew that spacecraft around the earth three times. He was the first man to ever do this. Isn't that neat? When he came back down to earth, a parade was given in his name honoring him as a hero for what he had done.
 
3     Mr. Glenn decided to become a senator for the state of Ohio. That is a person who is voted on by all the citizens to speak for all the people in the state. He served a long time for the state of Ohio. This job was different from the one at NASA but kind of the same as he was still a person in charge. He did try to become President one time, but he didn't win. That's okay; he had done so much already that maybe it was a good idea for him to take some time off. He was a senator from 1974-1999; that is twenty-five years!

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