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!

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/340194-black-history-month-top-10-greatest-black-athletes

African American Athletes book

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