Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Journeys Lesson 11 - Jump / Black Athletes

Our Journeys Reading story for Lesson 11, Jump! From the Life of Michael Jordan by Floyd Cooper, required us to write a descriptive paragraph about our favorite athlete. I challenged students to write about an African American athlete for a few reasons.

1) The teacher-dork in me loves alliterative bulletin boards...have you noticed?
2) It will be perfect for our February bulletin boards.
3) February is Black History Month.
4) Michael Jordan is a black athlete.

Others who were in our guided reading books or Projectables. include:

  • Tiger Woods
  • Hank Aaron
  • Wilma Rudolph
  • Jackie Robinson 
  • Roberto Clemente


Other black athletes we didn't read about but knew about:
  • Lebron James (basketball)
  • Muhammad Ali (boxing)
  • Leila Ali (boxing)
  • Dwayne Wade (basketball)
  • Venus and Serena Williams (tennis)
  • Dominique Dawes (gymnastics)
  • Derek Jeter (baseball)
  • Alex Rodriguez (baseball)
  • Pele (soccer)
  • Jackie Joyner-Kersee (track and field)
  • Florence Griffith-Joyner (track and field)
  • Althea Gibson (tennis)
  • Lisa Leslie (basketball)
  • Sheryl Swoopes (basketball)
Of course, I also allowed them to write about other athletes, who were also in our reading, especially ones such as:

  • Michele Kwan,
  • Jim Thorpe
  • Babe Ruth
  • Mia Hamm
  • Nomar Garciaparra
We created this anchor chart to show what we learned when we analyze the author's craft in Jump.

One of my students found this book in our library:

If you'd like to do the project but don't have our reading program, check out these links!