HIT: Baseball Theme 1

[Belinda Holbrook <holbrook@REVEALED.NET>]

     Thanks to everyone who sent their ideas for reading, writing,
science, and math ideas for a theme centering around baseball. I very
much appreciate everyone who helped.

I recently purchased biographies of Mark Maguire and Sammy Socha from
Rockbottom Books.  The kids LOVE them, can't keep them on the shelves.
Also,
from Rockbottom is a series called "Awesome Athletes" - a couple of those
titles are baseball stars (Cal Ripkin comes to mind as one).

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We have a baseball week with our 7th & 8th graders(all boys school).
They come in to look up stadium measurements for math(Complete Stadium
guide-I borrow from various public libraries.  English puts on poems and
sketches.  They go to a Red Wings game and play on school property, etc.
Even religion does something baseball-behavior of players..  Science
does the physics of it.

*************************************************************************

At the end of the year I divide my fifth grade classes into 2 teams.  We
set
up imaginary bases with carpet squares.  We play library trivia (you could
use any subject).  The questions have 3 ratings, easy, moderate or hard.
Each player chooses a question and if answered goes to first, second or
third
base.  If missed, he's out.  Three strikes and you're out!  We play for
several weeks keeping a running tally of the score.

*************************************************************************

Be sure to play the Abbott & Costello skit: Who's on First?.
 I always used it at the beginning of baseball season, and the kids
always got a kick out it.

*************************************************************************

I love Hang Tough Paul Mather by Alfred Slote.

*************************************************************************

One of my favorite baseball stories is The Southpaw" by Judith
Viorst (it's also reprinted in Caroline Feller Bauer's Storytelling
Handbook). The story is a series of notes passed in class by a boy and
girl
who were friends but get into a fight because he won't let her pitch on
his
baseball team. Through the notes they "negotiate" a settlement that
results
in the girl AND her girlfriends playing on the team. I usually write out
the first two notes on ripped pieces of notebook paper and fold them up
differently, and pick a boy and girl who are good readers from the class
to
read them aloud as the characters. Then I ask students what is happening
to
make sure they understand and get them into the action before I continue
reading the rest of the notes myself from the book. I let my two "actors"
sit down for the rest, but I look right at them when the note is addressed
to them, and the kids love it.

(I guess it shows my age but I remember it from "Free To Be You and Me". I
read it to classes back in the seventies!)

**********************************************************************

More ideas to come!



Belinda Holbrook
Media Specialist
Madison School
Davenport, IA
holbrook@revealed.net

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