Who Is Telling This — Just like Josh Gibson

Ready-to-teach lesson

TUMBLETA · GRADE 3 · VERIFIED STANDARD EDITION

Minnesota Just like Josh Gibson - Who Is Telling This

3.1.5.1 Standard

Use literary text features, including nonliteral language and narrative point of view, to understand literary texts.

Why this lesson is a winner Students trace nested narration and identify how repeated phrases mark the source of information.

Decision: WINNER

Included only because the lesson teaches and assesses the claimed expectation. Partial or merely topical matches are excluded.

The standards page is additive. The approved TumbleTA skill lesson follows unchanged.

Says she hands the ball to her granddaughter at the end.

2.Who Is Telling This

Full lesson

TIME

35 minutes

OBJECTIVE

Work out how many people are between the reader and the events, and how the book marks each one.

STUDENT PRODUCT

A three-column sort, and the voice that ends the book

FOCUS

Narration at more than one remove, marked by two repeated phrases

Essential question

Whose story is this, and who is passing it on?

Materials

The book Pages 1, 4, 6 and 7, found before the lesson One sorting sheet each Text to mark before teaching Passage 1 — a catcher and an umpire, both looking up Passage 4 — a girl in a catcher's chest protector, family watching from benches Passage 6 — carried shoulder-high by the team, holding up a ball Passage 7 — an old woman with a framed team photograph, and a girl holding the ball

Lesson sequence

1: Launch · 5 min
Focus:: Two people between us and the event
Teacher direction:: Ask the class who is telling this story. Read the first sentence twice and let them notice that somebody is telling us what somebody else says.
Prepared text:: Passage 1
2: Teacher model · 7 min
Teacher model:: I count the layers on the first page. Somebody is speaking to me - I cannot see who yet. That person is reporting what Grandmama says.

page 1

And Grandmama is repeating something that the story goes, which means she did not see it either.

So the tale about Josh Gibson has reached me thirdhand, and the book tells me so in its first two sentences.

Prepared text:

3 Who says what · 13 min

Passage 1

Focus:: Grandmama says, and the story goes
Teacher direction:: Using Passages 1, 4 and 6, sort the sentences by who is telling them - the child, Grandmama, or nobody in particular.
Expected answer:: Two phrases do the sorting. Grandmama says marks the

things she remembers herself - that her papa came with a bat, that Danny pretended to be a Dodger while she was always Josh Gibson for the Grays, that everybody said she could do it all. The story goes marks the tallest claims, the ones nobody can vouch for: the ball that took a day to come down, and hitting the ball a mile. And a few lines belong to neither - girls in the forties didn't play baseball is stated as plain fact by the child telling us. Even the sentence too bad she's a girl appears twice, once inside quotation marks because somebody said it, and once without, as the teller repeating it.

Student product:: Three columns: Grandmama, the story goes, the teller
Prepared text:: Passage 1, Passage 4, Passage 6

4 Whose voice ends it · 10 min

Focus:: Quotation marks on the last page
Teacher direction:: Using Passages 6 and 7, write who speaks the last words of the book and how you can tell.
Expected answer:: The last words are Grandmama's, not the child's. You can tell because the page says as she hands the ball to me she says, and then opens quotation marks that do not close until the end of the book. So the whole of the final speech - there's nothing like baseball, baby, and the cheers while stealing home - is her voice. The child's only words on that page are the three that set it up, and one of them is me, which is the first time we learn the teller is in the room at all.
Prepared text:: Passage 6, Passage 7

Teacher guidance

Why this text works: Count the layers out loud on the first page and the rest of the lesson follows. The two phrases are the tools - Grandmama says for what she remembers, the story goes for what has been passed on - and once a class has them they can sort almost every sentence in the book. The detail worth saving is on page four, where too bad she's a girl appears twice on the worth saving is on page four, where too bad she's a girl appears twice on the same page, once in quotation marks and once without. Ask who says it the second time. Then the last page, where the quotation marks open and never close, and the word me tells us the teller has been sitting there all along.

page 2

Expected answer:: There are two people between the reader and most of what happens. A child is speaking to us, and she is reporting her grandmother, who is sometimes reporting a story she did not see herself. The book marks all three levels with two phrases. Grandmama says introduces what the grandmother remembers - her papa and the bat, Danny pretending to be a Dodger while she was always Josh Gibson, everybody saying she could do it all. The story goes introduces the parts nobody can vouch for, including the ball that took a day to come down and hitting it a mile. And some sentences are the child's own flat statement, like girls in the forties didn't play baseball. On the last page the quotation marks open as the ball changes hands and never close, so the book finishes in Grandmama's voice.

Model: I notice that the line too bad she's a girl is printed twice on the same page, and only the first one has quotation marks round it. Somebody at the field said it. The second time nobody says it - it is the person telling us, repeating it, and that is where you can hear what she thinks of it.

Support and extension

Above: The child telling this story never describes herself and is only called me. Explain what the book gains by keeping her almost invisible.

Below: Sort the sentences into the three columns, then write whose voice ends the book.

Assessment

Look for:: Says a child is telling us the story.

Says the child is reporting what Grandmama said.

Uses the phrase Grandmama says as the evidence.

Says the story goes marks a tale nobody saw.

Says the last words are Grandmama's.

Short version

TIME

20 minutes

OBJECTIVE

Work out how many people are between the reader and the events, and how the book marks each one.

STUDENT PRODUCT

A three-column sort, and the voice that ends the book

FOCUS

Narration at more than one remove, marked by two repeated phrases

Essential question

Whose story is this, and who is passing it on?

Materials

page 3

Lesson sequence
1: Launch · 4 min
Focus:: Two people between us and the event
Teacher direction:: Ask the class who is telling this story. Read the first sentence twice and let them notice that somebody is telling us what somebody else says.
Prepared text:: Passage 1
2: Teacher model · 6 min
Teacher model:: I count the layers on the first page. Somebody is speaking to me - I cannot see who yet. That person is reporting what Grandmama says.

And Grandmama is repeating something that the story goes, which means she did not see it either.

So the tale about Josh Gibson has reached me thirdhand, and the book tells me so in its first two sentences.

Prepared text:

3 Who says what · 10 min

Passage 1

Focus:: Grandmama says, and the story goes
Teacher direction:: Using Passages 1, 4 and 6, sort the sentences by who is telling them - the child, Grandmama, or nobody in particular.
Expected answer:: Two phrases do the sorting. Grandmama says marks the things she remembers herself - that her papa came with a bat, that Danny pretended to be a Dodger while she was always Josh Gibson for the Grays,

pretended to be a Dodger while she was always Josh Gibson for the Grays, that everybody said she could do it all. The story goes marks the tallest claims, the ones nobody can vouch for: the ball that took a day to come down, and hitting the ball a mile. And a few lines belong to neither - girls in the forties didn't play baseball is stated as plain fact by the child telling us. Even the sentence too bad she's a girl appears twice, once inside quotation marks because somebody said it, and once without, as the teller repeating it.

Student product:: Three columns: Grandmama, the story goes, the teller
Prepared text:: Passage 1, Passage 4, Passage 6

Teacher guidance

Why this text works: Count the layers out loud on the first page and the rest of the lesson follows. The two phrases are the tools - Grandmama says for what she remembers, the story goes for what has been passed on - and once a class has them they can sort almost every sentence in the book. The detail worth saving is on page four, where too bad she's a girl appears twice on the same page, once in quotation marks and once without. Ask who says it the second time. Then the last page, where the quotation marks open and never close, and the word me tells us the teller has been sitting there all along.

page 4

Expected answer:: There are two people between the reader and most of what happens. A child is speaking to us, and she is reporting her grandmother, who is sometimes reporting a story she did not see herself. The book marks all three levels with two phrases. Grandmama says introduces what the grandmother remembers - her papa and the bat, Danny pretending to be a Dodger while she was always Josh Gibson, everybody saying she could do it all. The story goes introduces the parts nobody can vouch for, including the ball that took a day to come down and hitting it a mile. And some sentences are the child's own flat statement, like girls in the forties didn't play baseball. On the last page the quotation marks open as the ball changes hands and never close, so the book finishes in Grandmama's voice.

Model: I notice that the line too bad she's a girl is printed twice on the same page, and only the first one has quotation marks round it. Somebody at the page, and only the first one has quotation marks round it. Somebody at the field said it. The second time nobody says it - it is the person telling us, repeating it, and that is where you can hear what she thinks of it.

Support and extension

Above: The child telling this story never describes herself and is only called me. Explain what the book gains by keeping her almost invisible.

Below: Sort the sentences into the three columns, then write whose voice ends the book.

Assessment

Look for:: Says a child is telling us the story.

Says the child is reporting what Grandmama said.

Uses the phrase Grandmama says as the evidence.

Says the story goes marks a tale nobody saw.

Says the last words are Grandmama's.

3.Outside The Fence

Full lesson

TIME

34 minutes

OBJECTIVE

Find the ways this book shows what Grandmama was kept out of, and what she carried with her anyway.

page 5