Ready-to-teach lesson
Whole-Book Plan
Just like Josh Gibson - Grade 3 - Short lesson
TIME
OBJECTIVE
16 minutes Read the whole book and explain what Grandmama was not allowed to do, and what happened the day she played.
Essential question: She could do it all. So why was she outside the fence?
Materials
Text to mark
PRODUCT
A chart of the rule, the day it changed, and the ending
- • The book
- • Passage 1 - a catcher and an umpire, both looking up
- One chart each
- Prepared passages: Passage 1, Passage 3, Passage 5
Lesson sequence
1 Before reading - 3 min
- Passage 3 - a fence, with a girl on one side and two players on the other
- Passage 5 - lacing up borrowed baseball shoes beside a boy in a sling
- Focus:
- A story that cannot be true
- Teacher direction:
- Read the first page and stop after the umpire's line. Ask whether that could really have happened. Then ask why somebody would tell it anyway.
- Prepared text:
- Passage 1 2 Teacher model - 5 min
- Teacher model:
- I read the page about the fence and I say what it means in practice. She is good enough - everybody says so on the next page - and she is outside the fence watching her cousin's team. The picture puts the fence right between her and the two boys in uniform. Nothing is stopping her except a rule nobody in the book even argues about.
page 1
- Prepared text:
- Passage 3 3 What she is allowed and not allowed - 8 min
- Focus:
- A rule, and the day it gives way
- Teacher direction:
- Using Passages 3 and 5, write what Grandmama is not allowed to do, and how she finally gets to play.
- Expected answer:
- Girls in the forties did not play baseball. They were not supposed to take the field with the boys or even have batting dreams, so however big she got she stood outside the fence, watching her cousin Danny and the Maple Grove All-Stars from there. What changes it is not anybody deciding she should be allowed: two hot days after the Fourth of July Danny hurts his arm sliding into second, the team is down to eight players, and they look to her because there is nobody else. She goes to the plate in a pink dress with a white bow and Danny's baseball shoes.
- Student product:
- Two boxes: the rule, and the day it changed
- Prepared text:
- Passage 3, Passage 5
Support & extension
Above: Grandmama only gets to play because somebody was injured. Explain whether that makes the ending a happy one.
Below: Fill the two boxes, then write how the book ends.
Assessment
- Says girls in the forties were not allowed to play baseball
- Says Grandmama watched from outside the fence
- Says she got to play when Danny was hurt
- Says she played well - hit, caught and ran
- Says she hands the ball to her granddaughter at the end
page 2