Every Monday, I highlight a book from our school bookroom along with lesson plan suggestions.
My Grandma, Major League Slugger. By Dan Greenburg
You can find a teacher copy of this book and the Targeted Treasure Hunt for it in the red Silly Book mentor text bucket in the bookroom. We have a complete set of lesson plans left over from our SFA book set, which might be useful for comprehension questions and vocabulary lessons. We also have 29 student copies, separated into book sets of six each and filed under Guided Reading level M.
The SFA suggested instructional goal is “questioning II,” which involves asking questions that can be proven in the text as well as asking higher level questions. There isn’t a CAFE menu in the bag yet, as I am writing this post during Snowpocalypse 2010 and I don’t have access to the copy machine.
If you’re using this in a unit on families, we also have book sets on grandmas for Fountas and Pinnell levels D and E (DRA 5 and 8), and a billion books on families. I’m sure there are many others that would fit into the category — I’ve only searched for books with grandma or families in the title or subject tags.
Additionally, you might also want to take the unit in the direction of women making breakthroughs in baseball.
- Our school library has a copy of Mighty Jackie, which is about Jackie Mitchell (and illustrated by the author of the Amelia books).
- I have a copy of Players in Pigtails in my classroom library that you can borrow.
- Did you know that “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” was written about a girl?!
- And you can always watch a clip from A League of Their Own, which chronicles the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. (the trailer perhaps has a few inappropriate references)
There was an all-women’s minor league baseball team that played in the 1990’s? They were neat.
Finally, Jim Trelease has some great sports read-aloud suggestions at his Web site (scroll down to the bottom of the page).
Comments and constructive feedback are always welcomed. Please let me know if these lessons were useful in your class!
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